Error in Pepsi's Number Generation System Led to Decades-Long Damages in the Philippines

May 25, 1992

The AI-powered number generation system in Pepsi's Number Fever promotion in the Philippines produced an incorrect winning number, held by thousands. This error led to riots, loss of life, conspiracy theories, and decades of legal battles, highlighting the importance of trustworthy AI governance. HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern) encourages all AI stakeholders to prioritize harm prevention and establish safe and secure AI practices.

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Matched TAIM controls

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

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.717, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
GOVERN 6.1 — similarity 0.704, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.702, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: pepsi
Alleged developer: d.g.-consultores
Alleged harmed parties: filipinos

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/379

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.