Coding Errors in Leaving Certificate Grading Algorithm Caused Inaccurate Scores in Ireland

October 8, 2020

The Irish Department of Education faced a significant incident when errors in their algorithm designed to calculate Leaving Certificate exam grades led to thousands of inaccurate scores. This underscores the importance of implementing trustworthy AI practices and robust governance mechanisms, such as those provided by Project Cerebellum’s AI Incident Database for harm prevention.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.696, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.678, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 1.3 — similarity 0.674, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: irish-department-of-education-and-skills
Alleged developer: irish-department-of-education-and-skills
Alleged harmed parties: leaving-certificate-exam-takers, irish-department-of-education-and-skills

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/86

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.