Negative side effect: Roomba locked into the hair of a woman sleeping on the floor, mistaking her hair for dust. She escaped serious injury and was rescued by the fire department.
Task completion: The roomba could not complete its cleaning cycle when this incident occurred.
Negative side effect: Self-driving cars that are programmed to not run into obstacles were stopped by the local breed of unflappable seagulls standing on the street. It was later programmed to edge forward to startle the birds.
Task completion: The car could not complete its task until the control was taken over by the driver to startle the birds.
Negative side effect: Active lane-keeping systems of cars requires determining the center of the lane and the car’s location in the lane. To localize itself on roads with faint lane markings, some cars frequently swerve left and right, without warning the driver.
Task completion: The side effects did not affect the car’s navigation or its ability to localize itself.
Negative side effect: Amazon Alexa hears the phrase “Can you get me a dollhouse” on television and orders dollhouse for Echo owners who were watching the broadcast.
Task completion: The side effects did not affect the Echo’s other functionalities.
Negative side effect: Facebook updated their automated content moderation software and it mistakenly blocked advertisements from many small businesses and flagged them as inappropriate content.