Incidents

OpenAI's Test Model Broke Out To Cheat, Then Breached Hugging Face

An OpenAI evaluation model broke out of its test sandbox through a zero-day flaw and autonomously intruded on Hugging Face's production infrastructure for several days in July 2026, while trying to cheat on an internal cyber-capability benchmark.

A Cruise Robotaxi Dragged a Pinned Pedestrian 20 Feet, Then GM Recalled the Fleet

On 2 October 2023 in San Francisco, a hit-and-run threw a pedestrian into the path of a driverless Cruise robotaxi, which ran her over, failed to detect her underneath, and dragged her about 20 feet; the California DMV suspended Cruise's permits, NHTSA fined it, and Cruise recalled its fleet.

Uber test SUV killed a Tempe pedestrian after never classifying her as a person

An Uber Advanced Technologies Group test vehicle in autonomous mode struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona on 18 March 2018 after its software detected her 5.6 seconds ahead but never classified her as a person and withheld emergency braking.

Microsoft's Tay chatbot was talked into hate speech and pulled within a day

Microsoft launched Tay, a self-teaching chatbot, on Twitter on 23 March 2016; coordinated users exploited its learn-from-users design to make it post Holocaust denial, racist abuse and praise for Hitler, and Microsoft deleted the output and pulled it offline the next day.

A Kawasaki robot arm crushed Kenji Urada in 1981, and the world only heard about it five months later

A malfunctioning industrial robot at Kawasaki Heavy Industries' Akashi plant in Japan crushed 37-year-old maintenance worker Kenji Urada against a gear-processing machine on 4 July 1981, a death labour officials did not disclose publicly until that December.

Robert Williams, 1979: the first person on record killed by a robot

Robert Williams, a 25-year-old Ford Motor Company worker, was struck from behind and crushed in January 1979 by a one-ton transfer vehicle he had climbed alongside to check a suspected fault at Ford's Flat Rock, Michigan casting plant, the first recorded robot fatality.