Tesla's Autopilot Misidentified the Moon as Yellow Stop Light

July 23, 2021

The owner of a Tesla vehicle recorded a video showing the car's Autopilot system mistaking the moon for a yellow stop light, leading to unexpected braking. This incident underscores the importance of trustworthy AI and 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 0.684, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.642, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.640, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: tesla
Alleged developer: tesla
Alleged harmed parties: tesla-drivers

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/145

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.