Nuclear False Alarm

September 26, 1983

An alert of five incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles was properly identified as a false-positive by the Soviet Union operator Stanislav Petrov in 1983. This incident serves as a poignant reminder of the need for trustworthy and safe AI, especially in critical systems such as nuclear defense.

For those interested in shaping guardrails for AI and contributing to the HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern), this incident underscores the importance of Measuring and Managing AI systems effectively to prevent harm.

JOIN US

Matched TAIM controls

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

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.711, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 3.1 — similarity 0.649, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MANAGE 4.1 — similarity 0.642, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: soviet-union
Alleged developer: soviet-union
Alleged harmed parties: all-life-on-earth

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/27

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.