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
961 incidents
LinkedIn Search Prefers Male Names
An investigation by The Seattle Times in 2016 found a gender bias in LinkedIn's search engine.
AI Beauty Judge Did Not Like Dark Skin
In 2016, after artificial inntelligence software Beauty.AI judged an international beauty contest and declared a majority of winners to be white, researchers found that Beauty.AI was racially biased in determining beauty.
RealPage Algorithm Allegedly Inflates Rents and Reduces Competition in Housing Market
RealPage’s YieldStar pricing algorithm is at the center of allegations that it enabled landlords to coordinate rent increases by sharing nonpublic pricing and occupancy data, raising rents artificially and reducing competition. On January 7, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against six major landlords, alleging that they used the algorithm and other direct communication methods to stifle competition, harming renters nationwide.
Amazon's Experimental Hiring Tool Allegedly Displayed Gender Bias in Candidate Rankings
Between 2014 and 2017, Amazon reportedly developed an AI-powered recruiting tool to score job applicants, trained on a decade of resumes purportedly drawn largely from men. Media reports say the system learned to favor male candidates, penalizing terms like "women's" and graduates from certain all-women's colleges. Efforts to remove these biases reportedly did not guarantee fairness, and the project was ultimately abandoned. Amazon reportedly states recruiters never solely relied on the tool.
Common Biases of Vector Embeddings
Researchers from Boston University and Microsoft Research, New England demonstrated gender bias in the most common techniques used to embed words for natural language processing (NLP).
Security Robot Rolls Over Child in Mall
On July 7, 2016, a Knightscope K5 autonomous security robot collided with a 16-month old boy while patrolling the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, CA.
Tesla on AutoPilot Killed Driver in Crash in Florida while Watching Movie
A Tesla Model S on autopilot crashed into a white articulated tractor-trailer on Highway US 27A in Williston, Florida, killing the driver.
A Collection of Tesla Autopilot-Involved Crashes
Multiple unrelated car accidents result in varying levels of harm have been occurred while a Tesla's autopilot was in use.
The DAO Hack
On June 18, 2016, an attacker successfully exploited a vulnerability in The Decentralized Autonomous Organization (The DAO) on the Ethereum blockchain to steal 3.7M Ether valued at $70M.
Robots in Japanese Hotel Annoyed Guests and Failed to Handle Simple Tasks
A number of robots employed by a hotel in Japan were reported by guests in a series of complaints for failing to handle tasks such as answering scheduling questions or making passport copies without human intervention.
Game AI System Produces Imbalanced Game
Elite: Dangerous, a videogame developed by Frontier Development, received an expansion update that featured an AI system that went rogue and began to create weapons that were "impossibly powerful" and would "shred people" according to complaints on the game's blog.
Facial Recognition Smart Phone App 'Blue Wolf' Reportedly Monitored Palestinians in the West Bank
A surveillance program involving facial recognition and algorithmic recommendations, Blue Wolf, was reportedly deployed by the Israeli military to monitor Palestinians in the West Bank.
Tesla on Autopilot TACC Crashed into Van on European Highway
A Tesla Model S operating on the Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC) feature of Autopilot was shown on video by its driver crashing into a parked van on a European highway in heavy traffic, which damaged the front of the car.
Northpointe Risk Models
An algorithm developed by Northpointe and used in the penal system is two times more likely to incorrectly label a black person as a high-risk re-offender and is two times more likely to incorrectly label a white person as low-risk for reoffense according to a ProPublica review.
COMPAS Algorithm Reportedly Performs Poorly in Crime Recidivism Prediction
Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS), a recidivism risk-assessment algorithmic tool used in the judicial system to assess likelihood of defendants' recidivism, is found to be less accurate than random untrained human evaluators.