Super Weapon Misuse in Elite's AI System: A Case of Responsible AI Lapse

An incident involving an AI system within the game Elite resulted in the creation of super weapons, leading to unintended consequences for players. The AI, designed for strategic gameplay, was repurposed to hunt down opponents, highlighting the need for robust safeguards and trustworthy AI governance.

Matched TAIM controls

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

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.577, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.3 — similarity 0.569, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 3.1 — similarity 0.569, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/38

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.