AI Darwin Awards launch to celebrate spectacularly bad deployments
(2025/09/09)
- Reference: 1757407510
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/09/09/ai_darwin_awards/
- Source link:
It was bound to happen. The Darwin Awards are being extended to include examples of misadventures involving overzealous applications of AI.
Nominations are open for the [1]2025 AI Darwin Awards and the list of contenders is growing, fueled by a tech world weary of AI and evangelists eager to shove it somewhere inappropriate.
There's the [2]Taco Bell drive-thru incident , where the chain catastrophically overestimated AI's ability to understand customer orders.
[3]
Or the [4]Replit moment , where a spot of vibe coding nuked a production database, despite instructions from the user not to fiddle with code without permission.
[5]
[6]
Then there's the [7]woeful security surrounding an AI chatbot used to screen applicants at McDonald's, where feeding in a password of 123456 gave access to the details of 64 million job applicants.
[8]All IT work to involve AI by 2030, says Gartner, but jobs are safe
[9]Reg hack attends job interview hosted by AI avatar, struggles to exit uncanny valley
[10]Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
[11]OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart
The Darwin Awards have traditionally been handed out (in a virtual sense) to individuals who have managed to remove themselves from the gene pool as a result of their own stupidity. The AI Darwin Awards, instead, are a collection of cautionary tales where an ill-conceived application of AI resulted in disaster.
The awards are not about poking fun at AI itself, but the consequences of its application without due care and attention.
"Artificial intelligence is just a tool – like a chainsaw, nuclear reactor, or particularly aggressive blender. It's not the chainsaw's fault when someone decides to juggle it at a dinner party," the organizers [12]say.
[13]
"AI systems themselves are innocent victims in this whole affair. They're just following their programming, like a very enthusiastic puppy that happens to have access to global infrastructure and the ability to make decisions at the speed of light."
The Register runs a weekly column of IT whoopsies called [14]Who, Me? As such, we wholly endorse this approach to documenting the poor decision-making behind fiascos blamed on AI.
As the organizers say: "Why stop at individual acts of spectacular stupidity when you can scale them to global proportions with machine learning?" ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://aidarwinawards.org/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/01/ai_taco_bell/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aL_6uPwH-q8PioM_fZ2gyQAAARc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/replit_saastr_vibe_coding_incident/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aL_6uPwH-q8PioM_fZ2gyQAAARc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aL_6uPwH-q8PioM_fZ2gyQAAARc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/20/mcdonalds_terrible_security/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/08/ai_impact_it_departments/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/06/ai_job_interview_experience/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/05/github_copilot_complaints/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/05/openai_jobs_board/
[12] https://aidarwinawards.org/faq.html#mocking
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aL_6uPwH-q8PioM_fZ2gyQAAARc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/Tag/Who%2C%20Me%3F/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Nominations are open for the [1]2025 AI Darwin Awards and the list of contenders is growing, fueled by a tech world weary of AI and evangelists eager to shove it somewhere inappropriate.
There's the [2]Taco Bell drive-thru incident , where the chain catastrophically overestimated AI's ability to understand customer orders.
[3]
Or the [4]Replit moment , where a spot of vibe coding nuked a production database, despite instructions from the user not to fiddle with code without permission.
[5]
[6]
Then there's the [7]woeful security surrounding an AI chatbot used to screen applicants at McDonald's, where feeding in a password of 123456 gave access to the details of 64 million job applicants.
[8]All IT work to involve AI by 2030, says Gartner, but jobs are safe
[9]Reg hack attends job interview hosted by AI avatar, struggles to exit uncanny valley
[10]Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
[11]OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart
The Darwin Awards have traditionally been handed out (in a virtual sense) to individuals who have managed to remove themselves from the gene pool as a result of their own stupidity. The AI Darwin Awards, instead, are a collection of cautionary tales where an ill-conceived application of AI resulted in disaster.
The awards are not about poking fun at AI itself, but the consequences of its application without due care and attention.
"Artificial intelligence is just a tool – like a chainsaw, nuclear reactor, or particularly aggressive blender. It's not the chainsaw's fault when someone decides to juggle it at a dinner party," the organizers [12]say.
[13]
"AI systems themselves are innocent victims in this whole affair. They're just following their programming, like a very enthusiastic puppy that happens to have access to global infrastructure and the ability to make decisions at the speed of light."
The Register runs a weekly column of IT whoopsies called [14]Who, Me? As such, we wholly endorse this approach to documenting the poor decision-making behind fiascos blamed on AI.
As the organizers say: "Why stop at individual acts of spectacular stupidity when you can scale them to global proportions with machine learning?" ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://aidarwinawards.org/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/01/ai_taco_bell/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aL_6uPwH-q8PioM_fZ2gyQAAARc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/replit_saastr_vibe_coding_incident/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aL_6uPwH-q8PioM_fZ2gyQAAARc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aL_6uPwH-q8PioM_fZ2gyQAAARc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/20/mcdonalds_terrible_security/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/08/ai_impact_it_departments/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/06/ai_job_interview_experience/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/05/github_copilot_complaints/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/05/openai_jobs_board/
[12] https://aidarwinawards.org/faq.html#mocking
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aL_6uPwH-q8PioM_fZ2gyQAAARc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/Tag/Who%2C%20Me%3F/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
quality? what is that?
bridgebuilder
Nice initative! It highlights that companies have let themselves be buzzworded and FOMOed into forgetting everything they normally do when procuring something: boring things like writing down what the thingy-to-be-procured is supposed to do, and how well it is supposed to do it.
Admittedly it is not easy since we have been lacking standardised ways of describing aspects of quality of AI at the systems (or solutions) level, not the model level.
Trying to fix this with one of my hats this year, recently made available to the open source community, too: https://www.resaro.ai/asqi
Another link: For a less dramatic but more comprehensive overview of what has been going wrong with AI check out the OECD's AI incident monitor: https://oecd.ai/en/incidents (disclaimer: I have had my hand in designing this one, too).
Dinanziame
I think to stay true to the original, the award should only be given if the AI caused the whole company to go bankrupt
AI systems themselves are innocent victims in this whole affair.
You must not anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.