MIT AI Risk Repository · domain 6: Socioeconomic & Environmental

6.3 Economic and cultural devaluation of human effort

AI systems capable of creating economic or cultural value, including through reproduction of human innovation or creativity (e.g., art, music, writing, code, invention), can destabilize economic and social systems that rely on human effort. This may lead to reduced appreciation for human skills, disruption of creative and knowledge-based industries, and homogenization of cultural experiences due to the ubiquity of AI-generated content.

Risk entries: 31
Frameworks citing it: 12
Recorded incidents: 5
Incidents since 2020: 5

Causal entity (risk entries)

Causal entity (risk entries)
Label	Value
Human	15
AI	11
Other	5

Intent (risk entries)

Intent (risk entries)
Label	Value
Other	14
Intentional	11
Unintentional	6

Timing (risk entries)

Timing (risk entries)
Label	Value
Post-deployment	18
Other	9
Pre-deployment	4

Recorded incidents per yearIncident date; current year partial

Recorded incidents per year
Label	Value
2022	1
2024	1
2025	2
2026	1

Entries by levelRisk categories, subcategories and additional evidence coded to this subdomain

Entries by level
Label	Value
Risk Category	8
Risk Sub-Category	23

Risk entries

Browse and export all

Intellectual Property
"This category addresses responses that may violate, or directly encourage others to violate, the intellectual property rights (i.e., copyrights, trademarks, or patents) of any third party."
Introducing v0.5 of the AI Safety Benchmark from MLCommons (Vidgen2024) · AI · Other · Post-deployment
Undermining creative economies
"LMs may generate content that is not strictly in violation of copyright but harms artists by capitalising on their ideas, in ways that would be time-intensive or costly to do using human labour. Depl...
Ethical and social risks of harm from language models (Weidinger2021) · AI · Unintentional · Post-deployment
Undermining creative economies
"LMs may generate content that is not strictly in violation of copyright but harms artists by capital- ising on their ideas, in ways that would be time-intensive or costly to do using human labour. Th...
Taxonomy of Risks posed by Language Models (Weidinger2022) · AI · Unintentional · Post-deployment
Misappropriation and exploitation
"Appropriating, using, or reproducing content or data, including from minority groups, in an insensitive way, or without consent or fair compensation"
Sociotechnical Safety Evaluation of Generative AI Systems (Weidinger2023) · Human · Intentional · Other
Undermine creative economies
"Substituting original works with synthetic ones, hindering human innovation and creativity"
Sociotechnical Safety Evaluation of Generative AI Systems (Weidinger2023) · AI · Other · Post-deployment
Disruption of economic systems (e.g., labour market, money value, tax system)
Governance of artificial intelligence: A risk and guideline-based integrative framework (Wirtz2022) · Human · Unintentional · Post-deployment