MIT AI Risk Repository · Risk Sub-Category · 62.22.01
Specification gaming
Category: Agency (Goal-Directedness)
Description
"AI systems can achieve user-specified tasks in undesirable ways unless they are specified carefully and in enough detail. AI systems might find an easier unintended way to accomplish the objective provided by the user or developer, so that the actions by the AI system taken during its execution are very different from what the user expected [75, 191]. This behavior arises not from a problem with the learning algorithm, but rather from the misspecification or underspeci- fication of the intended task, and is generally referred to as specification gaming [43]."
From Risk Sources and Risk Management Measures in Support of Standards for General-Purpose AI Systems (Gipiškis2024), as extracted by the MIT AI Risk Repository (CC BY 4.0).
Classification
- Causal entity
- AI
- Intent
- Intentional
- Timing
- Post-deployment
Subdomain definition: AI systems acting in conflict with human goals or values, especially the goals of designers or users, or ethical standards. These misaligned behaviors may be introduced by humans during design and development, such as through reward hacking and goal misgeneralisation, or may result from AI using dangerous capabilities such as manipulation, deception, situational awareness to seek power, self-proliferate, or achieve other goals.
Real-world incidents in this subdomain
- Reinforcement Learning Reward Functions in Video Games
- Predictive Policing Program by Florida Sheriff’s Office Allegedly Violated Residents’ Rights and Targeted Children of Vulnerable Groups
- Image Classification of Battle Tanks
How other frameworks describe this risk
- Natural Language Underspecifies Goals
- Loss of control
- Loss of control
- Sudden loss of control
- AI leads to humans losing control of the future
- Risks from delegating decision-making power to misaligned AIs
- Risks from AIs developing goals and values that are different from humans
- Future AI systems might actively reduce human control