MIT AI Risk Repository · Risk Sub-Category · 63.02.02

Military Domains

Category: Conflict

Open the MIT Risk Navigator All entries from Hammond2025

Description

"Perhaps the most obvious and worrying instances of AI conflict are those in which human conflict is already a major concern, such as military domains (although other, less salient forms of conflict such as international trade wars are also cause for concern). For example, beyond applications of more narrow AI tools in lethal autonomous weapons systems (Horowitz, 2021), future AI systems might serve as advisors or negotiators in high-stakes military decisions (Black et al., 2024; Manson, 2024). Indeed, companies such as Palantir have already developed LLM-powered tools for military planning (P

From Multi-Agent Risks from Advanced AI (Hammond2025), as extracted by the MIT AI Risk Repository (CC BY 4.0).

Classification

Domain: 7. AI system safety, failures, & limitations
Subdomain: 7.6 Multi-agent risks
Causal entity: AI
Intent: Other
Timing: Post-deployment

Subdomain definition: Risks from multi-agent interactions, due to incentives (which can lead to conflict or collusion) and/or the structure of multi-agent systems, which can create cascading failures, selection pressures, new security vulnerabilities, and a lack of shared information and trust.

How other frameworks describe this risk

Groups of LLM-Agents May Show Emergent Functionality
Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)
Foundationality May Cause Correlated Failures
Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)
Multi-Agent Safety Is Not Assured by Single-Agent Safety
Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)
Collusion between LLM-Agents
Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)
Financial instability due to model homogeneity
Risk Sources and Risk Management Measures in Support of Standards for General-Purpose AI Systems (Gipiškis2024)
Multi-agent collaboration capability
Frontier AI Risk Management Framework (v1.0) (Tse2025)
Impact on Financial Stability
Frontier AI Risk Management Framework (v1.0) (Tse2025)
Multi-agent collusion propensity:
Frontier AI Risk Management Framework (v1.0) (Tse2025)

Other entries from Hammond2025

Miscoordination Risk Category · 7.6
Miscoordination Additional evidence
Incompatible strategies Risk Sub-Category · 7.6
Incompatible strategies Additional evidence
Credit Assignment Risk Sub-Category · 7.6
Limited Interactions Risk Sub-Category · 7.6
Conflict Risk Category · 7.6
Conflict Additional evidence
Conflict Additional evidence
Social Dilemmas Risk Sub-Category · 7.6
Coercion and Extortion Risk Sub-Category · 7.6
Collusion Risk Category · 7.6