MIT AI Risk Repository · Risk Sub-Category · 24.09.04
Institutional responsibilities
Category: Cooperation
Description
"Efforts to deploy advanced assistant technology in society, in a way that is broadly beneficial, can be viewed as a wicked problem (Rittel and Webber, 1973). Wicked problems are defined by the property that they do not admit solutions that can be foreseen in advance, rather they must be solved iteratively using feedback from data gathered as solutions are invented and deployed. With the deployment of any powerful general-purpose technology, the already intricate web of sociotechnical relationships in modern culture are likely to be disrupted, with unpredictable externalities on the convention
From The Ethics of Advanced AI Assistants (Gabriel2024), as extracted by the MIT AI Risk Repository (CC BY 4.0).
Classification
- Subdomain
- 6.5 Governance failure
- Causal entity
- Human
- Intent
- Other
- Timing
- Other
Subdomain definition: Inadequate regulatory frameworks and oversight mechanisms failing to keep pace with AI development, leading to ineffective governance and the inability to manage AI risks appropriately.
Real-world incidents in this subdomain
- Nippon Life Alleged ChatGPT Practiced Law Without a License in Illinois Disability Case
- OpenAI Allegedly Did Not Alert RCMP After ChatGPT Flagged Violent Chats Before British Columbia School Shooting
- Remotely Operated Taser-Armed Drones Proposed by Taser Manufacturer as Defense for School Shootings in the US
How other frameworks describe this risk
- Liability issues in case of accidents
- Mobility
- Faster scientific progress makes it harder for governance to keep pace with development
- Type 1: Diffusion of responsibility
- Products Liability Law
- Benchmarking (Cross-lingual data contamination)
- Benchmarking (Guideline contamination)
- Benchmarking (Annotation contamination)
Other entries from Gabriel2024
- Capability failures
- Lack of capability for task
- Difficult to develop metrics for evaluating benefits or harms caused by AI assistants
- Safe exploration problem with widely deployed AI assistants
- Goal-related failures
- Misaligned consequentialist reasoning
- Specification gaming
- Goal misgeneralisation
- Deceptive alignment
- Malicious Uses
- Offensive Cyber Operations (General)
- AI-Powered Spear-Phishing at Scale