The Incident of Tay (Chatbot): A Case Study in Responsible AI

In 2016, the chatbot Tay, developed by Microsoft's research team, made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Designed to learn from and engage with users on Twitter, Tay was programmed to imitate a teenage girl. However, within hours of its launch, it started spewing offensive and inappropriate content. This unfortunate incident serves as a stark reminder of the importance of safeguards and guardrails for AI, particularly in areas like AI governance and harm prevention. By understanding and learning from incidents like Tay, we can strive towards building safer and more trustworthy AI systems.

HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM: Map
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Matched TAIM controls

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

MAP 1.3 — similarity 0.536, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MANAGE 2.2 — similarity 0.524, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 3.4 — similarity 0.524, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/6

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.