Description: The Portland Water Bureau's AI-driven pilot program for water bill discounts is reported to have randomly selected Tim Boyle, a wealthy high-water consumer, for a 40% discount intended for financially struggling customers. The program, developed by SERVUS, is meant to identify underserved individuals by using machine learning.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Portland Water Bureau and SERVUS developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Portland Water Bureau , Tim Boyle , Low-income Portland residents and City of Portland.
Alleged implicated AI system: SERVUS
Incident Stats
Risk Subdomain
A further 23 subdomains create an accessible and understandable classification of hazards and harms associated with AI
7.3. Lack of capability or robustness
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.
- AI system safety, failures, and limitations
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
Tim Boyle could not quite believe his eyes. The Columbia Sportswear CEO pays a lot of bills, personally and for his company. It’s unusual for a supplier to offer him a big discount on something for which he pays full price.
But there it was…
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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