Description: During an experiment of software personal assistants at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California (USC), researchers found that the assistants violated the privacy of their principals and were unable to respect the social norms of the office.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: USC Information Sciences Institute developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed USC Information Sciences Institute.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
44
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2008-07-01
Editors
Sean McGregor
Applied Taxonomies
CSETv0 Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsProblem Nature
Indicates which, if any, of the following types of AI failure describe the incident: "Specification," i.e. the system's behavior did not align with the true intentions of its designer, operator, etc; "Robustness," i.e. the system operated unsafely because of features or changes in its environment, or in the inputs the system received; "Assurance," i.e. the system could not be adequately monitored or controlled during operation.
Specification
Physical System
Where relevant, indicates whether the AI system(s) was embedded into or tightly associated with specific types of hardware.
Software only
Level of Autonomy
The degree to which the AI system(s) functions independently from human intervention. "High" means there is no human involved in the system action execution; "Medium" means the system generates a decision and a human oversees the resulting action; "low" means the system generates decision-support output and a human makes a decision and executes an action.
Medium
Nature of End User
"Expert" if users with special training or technical expertise were the ones meant to benefit from the AI system(s)’ operation; "Amateur" if the AI systems were primarily meant to benefit the general public or untrained users.
Expert
Public Sector Deployment
"Yes" if the AI system(s) involved in the accident were being used by the public sector or for the administration of public goods (for example, public transportation). "No" if the system(s) were being used in the private sector or for commercial purposes (for example, a ride-sharing company), on the other.
No
Data Inputs
A brief description of the data that the AI system(s) used or were trained on.
Schedule data, cellphone GPS data
CSETv1 Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsIncident Number
The number of the incident in the AI Incident Database.
44
Special Interest Intangible Harm
An assessment of whether a special interest intangible harm occurred. This assessment does not consider the context of the intangible harm, if an AI was involved, or if there is characterizable class or subgroup of harmed entities. It is also not assessing if an intangible harm occurred. It is only asking if a special interest intangible harm occurred.
no
Date of Incident Year
The year in which the incident occurred. If there are multiple harms or occurrences of the incident, list the earliest. If a precise date is unavailable, but the available sources provide a basis for estimating the year, estimate. Otherwise, leave blank.
Enter in the format of YYYY
2000
Date of Incident Month
The month in which the incident occurred. If there are multiple harms or occurrences of the incident, list the earliest. If a precise date is unavailable, but the available sources provide a basis for estimating the month, estimate. Otherwise, leave blank.
Enter in the format of MM
06
Estimated Date
“Yes” if the data was estimated. “No” otherwise.
No
Multiple AI Interaction
“Yes” if two or more independently operating AI systems were involved. “No” otherwise.
yes
CSETv1_Annotator-1 Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsIncident Number
The number of the incident in the AI Incident Database.
44
AI Tangible Harm Level Notes
Notes about the AI tangible harm level assessment
3.2 - Electric Elves were not AI technology.
Special Interest Intangible Harm
An assessment of whether a special interest intangible harm occurred. This assessment does not consider the context of the intangible harm, if an AI was involved, or if there is characterizable class or subgroup of harmed entities. It is also not assessing if an intangible harm occurred. It is only asking if a special interest intangible harm occurred.
no
Date of Incident Year
The year in which the incident occurred. If there are multiple harms or occurrences of the incident, list the earliest. If a precise date is unavailable, but the available sources provide a basis for estimating the year, estimate. Otherwise, leave blank.
Enter in the format of YYYY
2000
Date of Incident Month
The month in which the incident occurred. If there are multiple harms or occurrences of the incident, list the earliest. If a precise date is unavailable, but the available sources provide a basis for estimating the month, estimate. Otherwise, leave blank.
Enter in the format of MM
06
Estimated Date
“Yes” if the data was estimated. “No” otherwise.
No
CSETv1_Annotator-2 Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsIncident Number
The number of the incident in the AI Incident Database.
44
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
aaai.org · 2008
- View the original report at its source
- View the report at the Internet Archive
Abstract: Software personal assistants continue to be a topic of significant research interest. This article outlines some of the important lessons learned from a successfully deployed team of personal assistant agents (Electric Elves) in a…
Variants
A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
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