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MIT AI Risk Repository · Risk Sub-Category · 47.02.15

Nascent capabilities (emergent capabilities)

Category: Ethical and social risks

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Description

"As large models undergo scaling, they meet critical thresholds at which they spontaneously develop new capabilities. The term “emergent behavior” refers to the unexpected or surprising outputs such models can generate. Some of these new skills are definitely high risk, such as models’ ability to deceive, use their own strategies, seek power, autonomously replicate, and adapt or “self-exfiltrate.”"

From Regulating under Uncertainty: Governance Options for Generative AI (G'sell2024), as extracted by the MIT AI Risk Repository (CC BY 4.0).

Classification

Causal entity
AI
Timing
Other

Subdomain definition: AI systems that develop, access, or are provided with capabilities that increase their potential to cause mass harm through deception, weapons development and acquisition, persuasion and manipulation, political strategy, cyber-offense, AI development, situational awareness, and self-proliferation. These capabilities may cause mass harm due to malicious human actors, misaligned AI systems, or failure in the AI system.

How other frameworks describe this risk

Other entries from G'sell2024