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
741 incidents
“Amazon’s Choice” Algorithm Failed to Recommend Functional Products and Prone to Review Manipulation
Amazon’s “Amazon’s Choice” algorithm recommended poor-quality defective products and were reportedly susceptible to manipulation by inauthentic reviews.
Passport checker Detects Asian man's Eyes as Closed
New Zealand passport robot reader rejects the application of an applicant with Asian descent and says his eyes are closed.
Robot at a Chinese Tech Fair Smashed a Glass Booth, Injuring a Visitor
At the 18th China Hi-Tech Fair, a robot suddenly smashed through a glass booth and injured a visitor, after a staff member reportedly mistakenly pressed a button, causing it to reverse and accelerate.
Poor Performance of Tesla Factory Robots
The goal of manufacturing 2,500 Tesla Model 3's per week was falling short by 500 cars/week, and employees had to be "borrowed" from Panasonic in a shared factory to help hand-assemble lithium batteries for Tesla.
Tesla FSD Reportedly Increased Crash Risk, Prompting Recall
A component of Tesla Full Self Driving system was deemed by regulators to increase crash risk such as by exceeding speed limits or by traveling through intersections unlawfully or unpredictably, prompting recall for hundreds of thousands of vehicles.
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.
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.