Facebook's Auto-Generated Targeting Ad Categories Contained Anti-Semitic Options

March 4, 2014

Facebook's automated advertising categories generated from users' declared interests inadvertently included anti-Semitic options like 'Jew hater' and 'How to burn Jews', listed as fields of study. Such incidents underscore the need for safe and secure AI practices.
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Alleged deployer
facebook
Alleged developer
facebook
Alleged harmed parties
jewish-people

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/380

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.

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