Facebook's auto translation AI fail leads to a nightmare for a Palestinian man

A recent incident involving Facebook's auto translation service underscores the importance of safe and secure AI. A Palestinian man, who spoke Arabic, was accidentally labeled as a 'potential terrorist' due to an incorrect translation. Such incidents highlight the need for trustworthy AI models and robust governance mechanisms.

Matched TAIM controls

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

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.518, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MANAGE 4.3 — similarity 0.488, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.5 — similarity 0.485, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

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Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/72

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.