Eroding trust and undermining shared knowledge

Classification

Domain

3. Misinformation

Subdomain

3.2 Pollution of information ecosystem and loss of consensus reality

Causal entity

AI

Intent

Other

Timing

Post-deployment

Subdomain definition: Highly personalized AI-generated misinformation creating “filter bubbles” where individuals only see what matches their existing beliefs, undermining shared reality, weakening social cohesion and political processes.

Real-world incidents in this subdomain

• 4 Apr 2024Google Books Appears to Be Indexing Works Written by AI
• 30 Nov 2022Uptick in Low-Quality AI-Produced Content Degraded Publishers' Submission Management
• 6 Dec 2021Korean Politician Employed Deepfake as Campaign Representative
• 10 Jul 2019Facebook Political Ad Delivery Algorithms Inferred Users' Political Alignment, Inhibiting Political Campaigns' Reach

How other frameworks describe this risk

• Radicalisation

  A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

• Information degradation

  A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

• Institutional trust loss

  A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

• Worsened epistemic processes for society

  A Survey of the Potential Long-term Impacts of AI: How AI Could Lead to Long-term Changes in Science, Cooperation, Power, Epistemics and Values (Clarke2023)

• AI contributes to increased online polarisation

  A Survey of the Potential Long-term Impacts of AI: How AI Could Lead to Long-term Changes in Science, Cooperation, Power, Epistemics and Values (Clarke2023)

• Widespread use of persuasive tools contributes to splintered epistemic communities

  A Survey of the Potential Long-term Impacts of AI: How AI Could Lead to Long-term Changes in Science, Cooperation, Power, Epistemics and Values (Clarke2023)

• Reduced decision-making capacity as a result of decreased trust in information

  A Survey of the Potential Long-term Impacts of AI: How AI Could Lead to Long-term Changes in Science, Cooperation, Power, Epistemics and Values (Clarke2023)

• Degradation of the information environment

  Capabilities and Risks from Frontier AI (DSIT2023)

Other entries from Gabriel2024

• Capability failures Risk Category · 7.3
• Lack of capability for task Risk Sub-Category · 7.3
• Difficult to develop metrics for evaluating benefits or harms caused by AI assistants Risk Sub-Category · 6.5
• Safe exploration problem with widely deployed AI assistants Risk Sub-Category · 7.3
• Goal-related failures Risk Category · 7.1
• Misaligned consequentialist reasoning Risk Sub-Category · 7.3
• Specification gaming Risk Sub-Category · 7.1
• Goal misgeneralisation Risk Sub-Category · 7.1
• Deceptive alignment Risk Sub-Category · 7.1
• Malicious Uses Risk Category · 4.0
• Offensive Cyber Operations (General) Risk Sub-Category · 4.2
• AI-Powered Spear-Phishing at Scale Risk Sub-Category · 4.1