The Wall Street Flash Crash: Understanding Potential AI Involvement

On May 6, 2010, the stock market experienced one of its most dramatic drops in history, known as the 'Flash Crash.' This incident, often referred to as 'the Hound of Hounslow,' saw a rapid decline in major indexes within minutes. Although human error was initially suspected, recent studies suggest that AI may have played a role. By understanding how AI could potentially contribute to such events, we can take steps towards safe and secure AI governance.

Matched TAIM controls

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

GOVERN 6.2 — similarity 0.475, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 3.2 — similarity 0.473, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 3.2 — similarity 0.472, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/28

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.