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Incident 113: Facebook's AI Put "Primates" Label on Video Featuring Black Men

Description: Facebook's AI mislabeled video featuring Black men as a video about "primates," resulting in an offensive prompt message for users who watched the video.

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Alleged: Facebook developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Black people and Facebook users.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
113
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2020-06-27
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam
Applied Taxonomies
CSETv1, GMF, MIT

CSETv1 Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Incident Number

The number of the incident in the AI Incident Database.
 

113

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.
 

yes

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
 

2021

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
 

08

Date of Incident Day

The day on which the incident occurred. If a precise date is unavailable, leave blank. Enter in the format of DD
 

Estimated Date

“Yes” if the data was estimated. “No” otherwise.
 

Yes

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified
Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

A further 23 subdomains create an accessible and understandable classification of hazards and harms associated with AI
 

1.1. Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation

Risk Domain

The Domain Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies risks into seven AI risk domains: (1) Discrimination & toxicity, (2) Privacy & security, (3) Misinformation, (4) Malicious actors & misuse, (5) Human-computer interaction, (6) Socioeconomic & environmental harms, and (7) AI system safety, failures & limitations.
 
  1. Discrimination and Toxicity

Entity

Which, if any, entity is presented as the main cause of the risk
 

AI

Timing

The stage in the AI lifecycle at which the risk is presented as occurring
 

Post-deployment

Intent

Whether the risk is presented as occurring as an expected or unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
 

Unintentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Incident OccurrenceFacebook Apologizes After A.I. Puts 'Primates' Label on Video of Black Men
Facebook Apologizes After A.I. Puts 'Primates' Label on Video of Black Men

Facebook Apologizes After A.I. Puts 'Primates' Label on Video of Black Men

nytimes.com

Facebook Apologizes After A.I. Puts 'Primates' Label on Video of Black Men
nytimes.com · 2021

Facebook users who recently watched a video from a British tabloid featuring Black men saw an automated prompt from the social network that asked if they would like to “keep seeing videos about Primates,” causing the company to investigate …

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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