MIT AI Risk Repository · Risk Sub-Category · 63.05.03

Homogeneity and correlated failures

Category: Network Effects

Open the MIT Risk Navigator All entries from Hammond2025

Description

"Homogeneity and Correlated Failures. The current paradigm driving the state of the art in AI is the ‘foundation model’ (Bommasani et al., 2021): large-scale ML models pre-trained on broad data, which can be repurposed for a wide range of downstream applications. The costs required to create such models (and continuing returns to scale) means that only well-resourced actors can create cutting- edge models (Epoch, 2023; Hoffmann et al., 2022; Kaplan et al., 2020), making them relatively few in number. If current trends continue, it is likely that many AI agents will be powered by a small number

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: Other
Intent: Other
Timing: Other

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)
Collusion between LLM-Agents
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)
Foundationality May Cause Correlated Failures
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)
Impact on Financial Stability
Frontier AI Risk Management Framework (v1.0) (Tse2025)
Multi-agent collaboration capability
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
Military Domains Risk Sub-Category · 7.6
Coercion and Extortion Risk Sub-Category · 7.6