MIT AI Risk Repository · domain 6: Socioeconomic & Environmental
6.1 Power centralization and unfair distribution of benefits
AI-driven concentration of power and resources within certain entities or groups, especially those with access to or ownership of powerful AI systems, leading to inequitable distribution of benefits and increased societal inequality.
- 54
- 12
- 6
- 2
| Label | Value |
|---|---|
| Human | 35 |
| Other | 13 |
| AI | 3 |
| Not coded | 3 |
| Label | Value |
|---|---|
| Intentional | 18 |
| Unintentional | 17 |
| Other | 16 |
| Not coded | 3 |
| Label | Value |
|---|---|
| Post-deployment | 25 |
| Other | 24 |
| Not coded | 3 |
| Pre-deployment | 2 |
| Label | Value |
|---|---|
| 2016 | 1 |
| 2017 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2 |
| 2021 | 1 |
| 2025 | 1 |
| Label | Value |
|---|---|
| Risk Category | 13 |
| Risk Sub-Category | 41 |
Risk entries
Browse and export all- Value lock-in
the most powerful AI systems may be designed by and available to fewer and fewer stakeholders. This may enable, for instance, regimes to enforce narrow values through pervasive surveillance and oppres...
- Concentration of Power
"Governments might pursue intense surveillance and seek to keep AIs in the hands of a trusted minority. This reaction, however, could easily become an overcorrection, paving the way for an entrenched...
- Exclusion
"The best AI techniques requires a large amount resources: data, computational power and human AI experts. There is a risk that AI will end up in the hands of a few players, and most will lose out on...
- Within-country issues: domestic inequality
"Our next problem is the fact that the current AI workforce does not evenly represent world demographics. Men from the US and China, working in the US, for US corporations, are disproportionately high...
- Demographic diversity of researchers
"The AI research establishment inherits patterns of under-representation that are dominant in most technical elds. In North America, large parts of professional AI research require a Ph.D., yet less t...
- Privatization of AI
"Researchers in deep learning and those with greater research impact are more likely to migrate to industry, raising concerns about the “privatization of AI knowledge” [278]. Specically, if the most s...
- Between-country issues: global inequality
"There is an even greater divide between the countries currently leading in AI and those falling behind. While AI is widely considered a national priority, with almost 40% of countries having created...
- Dystopian trajectory lock-in because of misuse of advanced AI to establish and/or maintain totalitarian regimes;
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- Systemic Risks
"In addition to risks stemming from the unreliability or misuse of general purpose AI models, further Systemic Risks can originate from the centralisation of general purpose AI development as well as...
- Economic Power Centralisation and Inequality
"Increasingly advanced general purpose AI models pose the risk of a concentration of economic power and exacerbation of existing inequalities through disparities in effective access to these models. T...
- Digital divide
"The digital divide is often defined as the gap between those who have and do not have access to computers and the Internet (Van Dijk, 2006). As the Internet gradually becomes ubiquitous, a second-lev...
- Power concentration
"EAI deployment could accelerate the consolidation of economic and political power. Unlocking increasing returns to capital for EAI owners, EAI will decrease employers’ reliance on and responsiveness...
- Labor & material/Macro-socio economic harms
Algorithmic systems can increase “power imbalances in socio-economic relations” at the societal level [4, 137, p. 182], including through exacerbating digital divides and entrenching systemic inequali...
- Financial Costs
"The estimated financial costs of training, testing, and deploying generative AI systems can restrict the groups of people able to afford developing and interacting with these systems."
- Concentration of Authority
"Use of generative AI systems to contribute to authoritative power and reinforce dominant values systems can be intentional and direct or more indirect. Concentrating authoritative power can also exac...
- Power
"The political influence and competitive advantage obtained by having technology."
- Market Concentration and Infrastructure Dependencies:
"Over-reliance on a limited number of dominant AI providers could create critical single points of failure across essential services. Market concentration in AI development may lead to scenarios where...
- Global AI Research and Development Divides:
"Asymmetric AI development capabilities between nations could exacerbate geopolitical tensions and create new forms of technological dependency. Countries lacking advanced AI capabilities may become i...
- Power
"The concentration of military, economic, or political power of entities in possession or control of AI or AI-enabled technologies."
- Algorithmic monoculture
"The dominance of specific AI models could lead to a lack of diversity in approaches, amplifying systemic risks if these models fail."
- Dependency on providers
"Excessive reliance on specific AI providers can lead to vulnerabilities due to lack of alternatives or interoperability."
- Winner-take-all dynamics
"The competitive nature of AI development could lead to significant eco- nomic and security advantages for a few entities."
- Disparate access to benefits due to hardware, software, skills constraints
"Due to differential internet access, language, skill, or hardware requirements, the benefits from LMs are unlikely to be equally accessible to all people and groups who would like to use them. Inacce...
- Disparate access to benefits due to hardware, software, skill constraints
Due to differential internet access, language, skill, or hardware requirements, the benefits from LMs are unlikely to be equally accessible to all people and groups who would like to use them. Inacces...
- Unfair distribution of benefits from model access
"Unfairly allocating or withholding benefits from certain groups due to hardware, software, or skills constraints or deployment contexts (e.g. geographic region, internet speed, devices)"