We recently talked about times AI got it really wrong, and here are 20 of the most ridiculous stories you shared.

1. The fake initiative

Our execs usually send out a hype email right before the annual employee morale survey, emphasizing wins from the past year, basically trying to put people in a positive frame of mind.

Last year’s included the announcement of a major new program we knew employees really wanted. But it was a bit surprising, because it fell in an area my team was responsible for, and we were out of the loop, despite advocating strenuously for this over the years. So I went to the exec to a) convey enthusiasm for his newfound dedication to launching this program and b) ask what support he needed from my team/get us involved again. It turned out the program wasn’t launching at all; he had just asked AI to edit the email to make it sound more exciting and appealing, and it had done so by … launching my initiative.

2. The predator

Sometimes at work my colleague uses AI in Photoshop to extend a background in a photo or clean up the background. We had a photo of a senior staff member outside: the background shows a building to the left of him and some trees and a road to the right, but it was portrait and we needed landscape. He asked Photoshop to extend the background on the right.

It generated a scary looking woman creeping up behind the staff member.

3. The nickname

I was on a Zoom call with AI notetaking software and was referring to a colleague named Bridget–but on the transcription, every time I specifically mentioned her name, it appeared as “Piglet.” This did not happen when others on the call said “Bridget”! It looked like that was just my nickname for her. I was so embarrassed.

4. The fake charity

My company hired an account manager who insisted he was a phenomenal writer and asked if he could contribute to our blog. The first pieces were just AI slop so I politely thanked him and said we had plenty of posts already.

So he posts a third “article” on his own LinkedIn account in which the AI described how our company collaborated with the CDC on researching a certain disease and publishing a groundbreaking study. Then we apparently went into underserved communities and funded a bunch of clinics and immunizations. NONE of this happened. It was hours before I saw it and forced him to take it down, and there were many surprised comments and shares. Months later, we were nominated for an award on our commitment to caring for vulnerable populations.

5. The transcript

I forgot the meeting was being transcribed and was talking to my cat while waiting for others to show up. “Baby, let me put it in” was at the top of the transcript to my absolute horror.

I was talking about his ear mite drops.

6. The grievance meetings

At my former workplace, the HR director did not know that her AI notes tool was recording her classified grievance meetings with the union representatives and sending a full recap after each one to all parties invited on the calendar invite, even if they weren’t in attendance. We got an email after a bit saying no one was allowed to use AI note takers any longer.

7. The “verifiable information”

Me: I’m doing a competitor analysis on [product type] for [customer segment]. Please give me an overview of all the [product type] products offered by banks in [my country] for this type of customer.

AI: (gushes) Sure! What a fantastic question, you’re a genius! (paraphrasing). Here is the overview.

Me: (searching for one of the product names listed … cannot find it anywhere) I can’t find this product anywhere. Did you make it up?

AI: Ooooh … did you mean actual products? Sorry! In future I’ll only reference verifiable information.

Me: (eye roll, crying into coffee mug, closes AI window)

(It continued to manufacture content.)

8. The job description

My mother is on the board of a wildlife habitat nonprofit. They work with wetland preservation and with both bats and owls. They were looking for a new director, so someone on the search committee decided to have AI make up the job listing. It included several useful traits (a reasonable amount of education, experience with fundraising, etc.) – but it also said the position required “five years’ experience teaching birds to fly.”

They rewrote the job listing.

9. The performance review

I had an employee request to use an AI to take notes during her performance review. The summary was one line: “No meaningful conversation took place”. I was glad I decided to take pen and paper notes because it was a very productive conversation indeed. Apparently the AI disagreed!

10. The baby announcement

At the end of a meeting, a colleague asked their boss to stay on the line for a couple of minutes. The colleague then confidentially shared the great news that they were expecting a baby, and they and their boss talked about a few next steps to plan for parental leave. The AI notetaker then sent out notes to everyone who had attended the meeting with the headline, “Colleague Is Having a Baby.”

11. “Dazzling you”

I’ve been involved in beta-testing and quality-controlling AI translation output because my employer wants to see if has utility in professional use cases. Here are some highlights:

– In an AI translation of a report about elder abuse, it randomly inserted the word “child” in front of the word “abuse” in various places. The concept of “child” did not appear in the source text at all.

– Every single abbreviation in the text was incorrect in a different way every single time. There was not a single correct abbreviation, and not a single abbreviation was translated the same way twice.

– The word “negro” was randomly inserted into a sentence for no apparent reason. This was early in my exposure to AI translation and I had no idea it could mess up that badly, so I spent ages trying to figure out if there was some stealth hidden racist dogwhistles in the source text. A colleague of mine also had a recurring problem of the word “bitch” randomly being inserted into sentences.

– Random misnegating – for example, the statement “more work is being done” is translated as “no more work is being done,”

– It translated the standard “Dear Sir or Madam” opening of a letter as “Dazzling you.”

– Rewording the source text in the source language rather than translating it. Yes, all the settings were configured correctly.

12. The Powerpoint

I asked Copilot to create a table comparing two things. It did an okay job. Then Copilot asked me if I wanted a Powerpoint slide of the table. I said sure, since I was going to put it into Powerpoint anyway. Copilot created the ugliest Powerpoint I have ever seen. Three slides (I only needed one) with a color scheme of lavender, salmon pink, and orange. The background of each slide had kind of a plaid pattern a coworker said reminded her of her grandmother’s couch. A random picture in a cartoon cloud shape.

However, that is better than our company’s internal AI. It doesn’t have the ability to output content into powerpoint, excel, etc, but it thinks it does. It’ll offer to create one for you and then do nothing. Coworkers have spent ages trying to figure out where AI is saving their non-existent files.

13. The comp titles

I work in publishing and I wanted to do some research on competing titles for a potential book we had in the pipeline. Asked AI for the bestselling current books on the topic, and it came up with a list that had some really interesting titles on it – great, I thought, I’ve never heard of half of these so we definitely need to check them out. Yep – turns out the AI had just completely made them up.

14. The editable document

Me: Copilot, can you turn this scanned PDF into an editable word document?

Copilot: Sure thing, Another Kristin, here you go!

Me (after opening the file): Copilot, this file is completely blank.

Copilot: Sorry, I made a mistake, here it is!

Me: (opens second file, sees that it is also blank, closes AI window and puts in request for OCR software)

15. The attack

A friend of mine showed me an AI summary of a meeting where the AI notetaker decided to attack someone for no reason– in the middle of the notes about what everyone was saying, it inserted, “Jane contributes nothing to the conversation.” I guess it was accurate because the coworker had been quiet since that part of the meeting wasn’t relevant to her projects … But why did it do that???

16. The scam

We work with a lot of small businesses just starting up, and as a result are asked to recommend professional services often. Knowing this, a client passed on a discreet warning about the bookkeeping firm we’d recommended to them. They had issues with their accounting software, Quickbooks, and called for help. It was right when Google started providing AI summaries for everything, and apparently their account rep pulled the phone number for Quickbooks’ support out of the AI summary, rather than off the website.

You can probably guess where this is going. The number wasn’t legit, but instead put him in contact with a scammer who’d managed to astroturf their way into the AI summary. The account rep gave the scammer full access to our client’s accounting software before he realized his error. Our client didn’t share a lot of details about the damages — I got the sense that they were saying very little because they were planning legal action — but they wanted to let us know so we wouldn’t recommend them again.

17. The transcript, part 2

A woman I work with introduced herself before an online presentation. Her last name is Buckman. The AI transcriber recorded her introduction as “Hi, I’m Amelia. F*ck, man, it’s nice to see you all today.”

18. The transcript, part 3

Two people stayed on the call after the rest of the team had left and complained about others on the project. Not only did the transcription record this, it tagged the individuals being discussed in the summary as an action item: “@Jane needs to stop dragging her feet and get her sh*t together”

19. The equipment

I recently saw a ~$50,000 piece of industrial equipment damaged and taken out of commission for about a month because Google AI search told a worker that the tightening torque of a screw was 50 ft*lb instead of 50 in*lb.

This resulted in them over-tightening the screw by a factor of 12, which unfortunately didn’t strip the threaded hole (which would have been a smaller problem) but instead warped a bearing assembly that required a full rebuild at considerable difficulty and expense.

The kicker is that the correct torque value was clearly printed in the service manual that is stored in the machine.

20. The privacy expert

We once had a IT person come into a meeting to talk about the importance of data privacy and security who didn’t realize he had an AI notetaker signed in until someone pointed it out.

The post the fake charity, the Photoshop predator, and other times AI got it wrong appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Located 45 minutes' drive southwest of Brussels, Enghien is famous for straddling the linguistic border. While it is located in the French-speaking region of Wallonia, several streets to the north-west of the town centre are in the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders. Beyond this peculiarity, the town is best known for its Parc d'Enghien, considered one of the most beautiful parks in Europe at the time of its construction in the 17th century. Although the park has been reduced in size and significantly modified, the most remarkable feature to survive is undoubtedly the Pavillon des Sept Étoiles, or Seven Stars Pavilion.

Hidden in the heart of the forest, the pavilion is a white and grey heptagonal kiosk set in the centre of a circular pond. It was built around 1661 at the park's highest point, intended to serve as an observation point for stargazing. Its name, Seven Stars, refers to "the seven planets known at the time". However, a correction is necessary: at the time of its construction, only six planets were known. The seventh was probably the Sun.

Each of its seven arches opens onto a park path lined with a different species of tree. The seven paths were separated by seven smaller paths ending with a statue representing one of the seven "planets". Over the years, this layout around the pavilion disappeared, and the pavilion became hidden under a thick forest.

At the end of the 1990s, during the pavilion's restoration, the decision was made to replant the site according to its original design. Today, you can walk along avenues of hornbeam trees that form a heptagon with a 125-meter radius around the pavilion, just as they did in the 17th century.

The pavilion's construction reflects the widespread enthusiasm for astronomical discoveries at the time, including among the aristocracy, fueled by the works of Galileo and Copernicus. Classified as a monument and historic site since 1972, it is also included on the List of Exceptional Heritage Sites in Wallonia.

bisexualbaker:

regicide1997:

So when I was getting dressed today, I very quickly put on a lab coat and some cat ears, not even trying to have something coherent, just wanting to have some kind of costume, and then I used some eyeliner to draw some whiskers on my face, so, yeah, that’s my costume, cat in a lab coat, does it make sense? no. who cares. Still wearing the same skirt and striped knee-high socks from yesterday, but that’s just my work clothes.

But then when I got to my office in the physics department, one of my colleagues was immediately like, “Oh! Schrödinger’s catgirl!”

It both was and was not a coherent costume until someone observed you and collapsed the wave form.

Have you made a lot of terrible life decisions?

Then our product is specifically for you!

Wow, this sounds like it’s designed specifically to prey on people who make bad financial decisions, by encouraging them to make more such decisions in the wake of their previous mistakes. Let’s ask the CEO about that:

We didn’t build Coverd to help people inhibit their spending; we built it to make spending exciting. We let spenders win twice – the second time is when they play it back and win. Our users want immediacy and upside. Coverd gamifies transactions with real financial leverage, meeting users where they are and turning spending into a moment they look forward to. 

That this is (probably) legal tells you a lot about how degenerate the financialization of everything has become.

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This is the grave of James Mann.

Born near Bloomington, Illinois in 1856, Mann grew up in a prominent agricultural family interested in reform of the topic. He went to the University of Illinois but rather than follow his older brother into the farm world, he wanted to be a lawyer. He got his law degree from Union College of Law in 1881 and then passed the bar and began practicing in Chicago. Like a lot of people we cover in this series, the law was a pathway to politics. Mann didn’t care so much about agricultural issues, but for a Gilded Age Republican, he was definitely on the reformer side of things and became identified with the growing Progressive movement.

Mann began running for local office in 1887 when he won a seat on a local board of education. That led to additional local runs. He made it to the City Council in 1892 and then in 1896, to Congress. Mann remained in Congress for the rest of his life. He was in a very Republican district and so never faced a serious challenge again. By and large, he was a big reformer.

But you know, when you are talking about Progressives, the reformers play as good or really bad depending on the issue, but they often come out of the same person. Mann is a great example of this. His name is on two enormously important bills. The first is the Mann-Elkins Act. This was passed in 1910 and is one of the key railroad regulation bills. It’s difficult to comprehend just how powerful the railroads were at this time and how loathed they were as corporations. It’s a bit like tech today, except that most Americans love tech so there’s no meaningful opposition to the horror show of the CEOs who want to dominate our lives. After all, who can say no to a world of terrible Netflix shows and Tik-Tok videos and fascist influencers? What a country! Well, back in the days when people actually had a critique of contemporary capitalism, the railroads were the top target.

So what Mann-Elkins did was to empower the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad rates, also expanding the ICC’s mandate to include the telegraph and growing telephone industries. When western railroads decided to jack up their rates in 1910, Mann and Stephen Elkins, who had lived in New Mexico for quite awhile but was then a senator from West Virginia, decided to act. It’s an important bill that really did reduce the power of corporate America a little bit. He also had introduced the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.

But then there’s the other side of the Progressives. That’s the side that liked to police bodies and behavior. The second thing Mann is known for is the infamous Mann Act, also from 1910, that made it a felony to bring women across state lines for sex work. Basically, this was the white slavery scare placed into law. Progressives were all whipped up over the idea that our good little white girls were entering the city and being taken in by evil Italians or Chinese or Blacks and given drugs and then forced into sex and a permanent sense of white slavery. In short, this is the early version of Nic Kristof’s bullshit about sex workers in Cambodia (and never forget that he was completely scammed in his “investigations” in Cambodia and his endless lies did not lead to even the slightest blink by the New York Times over continuing to run his white savior bullshit columns). Sex work was common. And there was some sex trafficking, sure. But was there even the slightest thought given to why this was happening and the economic conditions behind it? Not by too many people. Would they admit that for some women, sex work was a reasonable economic option? Absolutely not. No, it must be those foreigners and darkies.

So when the Mann Act passed in 1910, it was part of a larger freak out (see the 1911 film Traffic in Souls, which still exists, as the best cultural manifestation of this) over white slavery. Incidentally, it was Charles Sumner who actually coined the term “white slavery” back in 1847 to discuss the Barbary pirates’ engagement in the slave trade. Anyway, the first major prosecution of the law was of the boxer Jack Johnson, as whites were desperate to take him off of the throne as heavyweight champion. Johnson loved to date white women and flaunt them in the face of the crackers. And that a boxer would date prostitutes hardly shocked anyone. So Johnson was prosecuted under the Mann Act in 1912. Oddly, Mann opposed the Harrison Narcotics Act in 1912, so that was one area where he did not play the moral scold.

So that pretty much sums up the Progressives. We need to square these two sides. I recently reviewed a book about the horrors of Oregon progressives policing the bodies of women, gender non-binary people, and immigrants for a professional journal. It’s a good book, but I also stated that the overwhelming discussion of Progressives today are as horrible people and the social libertarianism of the left actually plays very well with the economic libertarianism of the right. In short, if all we do is condemn these people for engaging in state interventions with people (and in these cases, yeah, condemn anyway), then aren’t we also playing into the idea across the political spectrum that the state has no role to play in society period. In short, we have to be able to take the good parts of state intervention and also the bad parts and come up with a more sophisticated analysis of when the state should intervene in society. What is freedom anyway? I don’t think it is a libertarian paradise. In fact, that sounds terrible. But this seems to be where critics, both left and right, lean these days.

Anyway, Mann was still in Congress when he got pneumonia and died in 1922. He was 66 years old.

James Mann is buried in Oak Woods Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois.

If you would like this series to visit some of the people Mann worked on with his legislature, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Stephen Elkins is in Elkins, West Virginia (appropriately enough) and Weldon Heyburn is in Birmingham, Pennsylvania (despite being a senator from Idaho). Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.

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As the U.S. tariff act of June 6, 1872, was being drafted, planners intended to exempt “Fruit plants, tropical and semi-tropical for the purpose of propagation or cultivation.”

Unfortunately, as the language was being copied, a comma was inadvertently moved one word to the left, producing the phrase “Fruit, plants tropical and semi-tropical for the purpose of propagation or cultivation.”

Importers pounced, claiming that the new phrase exempted all tropical and semi-tropical fruit, not just the plants on which it grew.

The Treasury eventually had to agree that this was indeed what the language now said, opening a loophole for fruit importers that deprived the U.S. government of an estimated $1 million in revenue. Subsequent tariffs restored the comma to its intended position.