Description: AlgorithmWatch tested spam filtering algorithms across Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, GMX, and LaPoste. Their findings reportedly showed that Microsoft Outlook’s spam filter flagged emails based on specific keywords that led to racial and content-based biases blocking legitimate communications. Emails mentioning Nigeria or containing certain financial and sexual health terms were found to be disproportionately marked as spam.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Yahoo , LaPoste , GMX , Microsoft and Google developed an AI system deployed by Yahoo , Outlook , LaPoste , GMX and Gmail, which harmed Yahoo! Mail users , Microsoft Outlook users , LaPoste users , GMX users and Gmail Users.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Yahoo! Mail's spam filter , SpamAssassin , Microsoft Outlook's spam filter , LaPoste Mail's spam filter , GMX Mail's spam filter and Gmail's spam filter
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, Robustness
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.
Unclear/unknown
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.
Amateur
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.
inbound emails
CSETv1 Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsIncident Number
The number of the incident in the AI Incident Database.
83
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
algorithmwatch.org · 2020
- View the original report at its source
- View the report at the Internet Archive
An experiment reveals that Microsoft Outlook marks messages as spam on the basis of a single word, such as “Nigeria”. Spam filters are largely unaudited and could discriminate unfairly.
In an experiment, AlgorithmWatch sent a few hundred em…
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.
Similar Incidents
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Similar Incidents
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