AI Incidents
Real-world cases where AI systems caused harm, classified by risk domain and entity. Data sourced from 
AIID and classified by 
MIT AI Risk Initiative. CC BY-SA 4.0
287 incidents
Tesla on Autopilot Collided with Parked Fire Truck on California Freeway
A Tesla Model S operating on Autopilot mode crashed into the back of a parked fire truck on a freeway in Culver City, California in a non-fatal collision.
Customer Service Robot Scares Away Customers
Heriot-Watt Univeristy in Scotland developed an artificially intelligent grocery store robot, Fabio, who provided unhelpful answers to customer's questions and "scared away" multiple customers, according to the grocery store Margiotta.
Waze App Allegedly Caused Tourists’ Car to End up in Lake Champlain, Vermont
The tourists driving through Vermont blamed Waze for directing them into a boat launch in Lake Champlain, prompting the vehicle to slide into the water by the time the drivers realized their location in the dark and foggy weather.
Waze Navigates Motorists into Wildfires
Waze, a Google-owned directions app, led California drivers into the 2017 Skirball wildfires as they tried to evacuate the area.
Amazon Alexa Plays Loud Music when Owner is Away
An Amazon Alexa, without instruction to do so, began playing loud music in the early morning while the homeowner was away leading to police breaking into their house to turn off the device.
iPhone Face ID Failed to Recognize Users’ Morning Faces
The Face ID feature on iPhone allowing users to unlock their phones via facial recognition was reported by users for not recognizing their faces in the morning.
Facebook translates 'good morning' into 'attack them', leading to arrest
Facebook's automatic language translation software incorrectly translated an Arabic post saying "Good morning" into Hebrew saying "hurt them," leading to the arrest of a Palestinian man in Beitar Illit, Israel.
Facial Recognition Trial Performed Poorly at Notting Hill Carnival
The facial recognition trial by London’s Metropolitan Police Service at the Notting Hill Carnival reportedly performed poorly with a high rate of false positives.
Tesla Sedan on Autopilot Reportedly Drove Over Dividing Curb in Washington, Resulting in Minor Vehicle Damage
A Tesla Sedan operating on Autopilot mode was not able to center itself on the road and drove over a yellow dividing curb in Redmond, Washington, causing minor damage to the vehicle’s rear suspension.
Security Robot Drowns Itself in a Fountain
A Knightscope K5 security robot ran itself into a water fountain in Washington, DC.
Atlas Robot Fell off Stage at Conference
Boston Dynamics’s autonomous robot Atlas allegedly caught its foot on a stage light, resulting in a fall off the stage at the Congress of Future Science and Technology Leaders conference.
High False Positive Rate by SWP's Facial Recognition Use at Champion's League Final
South Wales Police (SWP)’s automated facial recognition (AFR) at the Champion's League Final football game in Cardiff wrongly identified innocent people as potential matches at an extremely high false positive rate of more than 90%.
Houston ISD's EVAAS Teacher-Evaluation System Reportedly Put Teachers' Jobs at Risk Through Unverifiable Scores
From 2011 to 2015, Houston Independent School District used SAS Institute’s Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS) to rate teacher effectiveness from student test-score growth. Teachers alleged that proprietary, unverifiable EVAAS scores contributed to terminations and contract nonrenewals. On May 4, 2017, a federal judge allowed due-process claims over the system to proceed.
Overfit Kaggle Models Discouraged Data Science Competitors
In the “The Nature Conservancy Fisheries Monitoring” competition on the data science competition website Kaggle, a number of competitors overfit their image classifier models to a poorly representative validation data set.
IBM Watson for Oncology Criticized by Customers for Allegedly Unsafe and Inaccurate Cancer Treatment Recommendations
Internal documents from IBM Watson Health showed negative assessments from customers such as Florida’s Jupiter Hospital and Memorial Sloan Kettering criticizing its Watson for Oncology product for allegedly unsafe and incorrect cancer treatment recommendations.