An isolated incident

“Isolated incident” is a term used to describe something that is not part of a pattern. This is often used when something bad, or worrying, has happened. Imagine you are talking with your supervisor about a new employee. The new employee came in an hour late that day. You can say, “I hope this is an isolated incident.” That means, “I hope this is not part of a pattern” or, “I hope he does not regularly come in late.”

Google introduced its competitor to ChatGPT; it’s called Bard. (Bard was Shakespeare’s nickname.) During its first public demonstration, it got a fact wrong. Unfortunately, that was not an isolated incident. That was actually part of a pattern: large language models frequently get facts wrong.