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Incident 156: Amazon Reportedly Sold Products and Recommended Frequently Bought Together Items That Aid Suicide Attempts

Description: Despite complaints notifying Amazon about the sale of various products that had been used to aid suicide attempts, its recommendation system reportedly continued selling them and suggesting their frequently bought-together items.

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Alleged: Amazon developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed people attempting suicides.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
156
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2022-02-04
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.
 

156

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
 

5.1. Overreliance and unsafe use

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. Human-Computer Interaction

Entity

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

Human

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
 

Intentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

+1
Amazon's algorithm suggests products for suicide attempts
Complaint For Civil Penalties and Demand for a Jury Trial
Amazon's algorithm suggests products for suicide attempts

Amazon's algorithm suggests products for suicide attempts

nytimes.com

Complaint For Civil Penalties and Demand for a Jury Trial

Complaint For Civil Penalties and Demand for a Jury Trial

cdn.arstechnica.net

Amazon's algorithm suggests products for suicide attempts
nytimes.com · 2022

The pleas to Amazon were explicit. A food preservative sold by the online retailer and other e-commerce sites was being used as a poison to die by suicide.

“Please stop selling this product,” began one review, posted on Amazon in July 2019 …

Complaint For Civil Penalties and Demand for a Jury Trial
cdn.arstechnica.net · 2022

Preliminary Statement

This is an action against Amazon.com, Inc. (“Amazon”) and Loudwolf, Inc. (“Loudwolf”) (collectively “Defendants"), which profit by selling a deadly chemical they know is used by children to die by suicide.

Amazon is gu…

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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