The USGS ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system erroneously sent out a false alert about a 5.9 magnitude earthquake in Nevada, causing cell phones to buzz with emergency warnings as far as San Francisco Bay area.
On December 4, the United States Geological Survey's automatic ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system erroneously sent out a report of a 5.9 magnitude earthquake near Dayton, Nevada. The false alert prompted cell phones in the San Francisco Bay area, approximately 180 miles away, to buzz with warnings telling residents to 'DROP! COVER! HOLD ON!' This was reportedly the first time the USGS had issued a completely bogus earthquake report. The system operates through a network of nearly 1,700 stations across Washington, Oregon, and California, and also pulls data from nearby states including Nevada. At least four earthquake-detecting stations in Nevada reported shaking, triggering the automated alert. Preliminary findings revealed that a faulty power system at one seismic station in Nevada played a role in triggering the false alert, creating data transmission issues. The system should have discarded the bad data but failed to do so. Multiple law enforcement agencies near the reported epicenter confirmed they felt no shaking or signs of an earthquake. After the incident, some Nevada stations were temporarily disconnected from ShakeAlert to prevent further false alarms while the system was investigated.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that fail to perform reliably or effectively under varying conditions, exposing them to errors and failures that can have significant consequences, especially in critical applications or areas that require moral reasoning.
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed