YouTube Recommendations Allegedly Promoted Radicalizing Material Contributing to Terrorist Acts

November 13, 2015

The family of Nohemi Gonzalez alleged that YouTube's recommendation systems inadvertently promoted propaganda videos for the Islamic State, potentially radicalizing individuals who later perpetrated the 2015 Paris terrorist attack involving 130 victims, including Ms. Gonzalez.

Understanding the importance of responsible AI and safe and secure practices, such incidents underscore the need for effective governance and oversight in AI systems like YouTube's recommendation algorithm. By joining Project Cerebellum or mapping this incident to HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern function), you can help establish trustworthy AI guardrails and contribute to harm prevention.
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Matched TAIM controls

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

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.634, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.618, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.615, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: youtube
Alleged developer: youtube
Alleged harmed parties: victims-in-paris-attacks, nohemi-gonzalez-family, nohemi-gonzalez

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/476

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.