Natural Cycles, a fertility tracking app using AI algorithms to predict fertile days, was associated with unwanted pregnancies in multiple users who relied on it as their primary contraceptive method.
Natural Cycles is a Swedish fertility tracking app developed by physicist couple Elina Berglund and Raoul Scherwitzl that uses AI algorithms to predict fertile and infertile days based on daily basal body temperature measurements. The app was certified as contraception across the EU in 2017 and has registered over 700,000 users from more than 200 countries, with 125,000 in the UK. In January 2018, a Swedish hospital reported that 37 of 668 women seeking abortions between September-December 2017 were using Natural Cycles as their sole birth control, prompting an investigation by Sweden's Medical Products Agency. The app claims 93% effectiveness with typical use and 99% with perfect use, but multiple users reported unwanted pregnancies despite following the app's instructions. The algorithm requires users to take their temperature immediately upon waking and provides red (fertile) or green (safe) day predictions, but users found the system unreliable due to factors like irregular cycles, lifestyle variations, and the app's cautious approach that required months to become reliable.
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