MIT AI Risk Repository
Browse AI risks
594 risk entries extracted from 74 frameworks, coded by domain, subdomain, causal entity, intent and timing. Filter, then export the current selection with its licence and citation attached.
-
"Attackers are beginning to use general- purpose AI for offensive cyber operations, presenting growing but currently limited risks. Current systems have demonstrated capabilities in low- and medium- complexity cybersecurity tasks, with state- sponsored threat actors actively exploring AI to survey target systems. Malicious actors of varying skill levels can leverage these capabilities against people, organisations, and critical infrastructure such as power grids."
-
"Growing evidence shows general- purpose AI advances beneficial to science while also lowering some barriers to chemical and biological weapons development for both novices and experts. New language models can generate step- by- step technical instructions for creating pathogens and toxins that surpass plans written by experts with a PhD and surface information that experts struggle to find online, though their practical utility for novices remains uncertain. Other models demonstrate capabilities in engineering enhanced proteins and analysing which candidate pathogens or toxins are most harmfu
-
61.02.02 · Risk Sub-Category
Sources of systemic risks from general-purpose AI
Ability to enhance and modify pathogens
"AI can be used to enhance pathogens, making them more lethal or resistant to treatments."
-
"Powerful AI technologies may fall into the hands of terrorists."
-
61.02.48 · Risk Sub-Category
Sources of systemic risks from general-purpose AI
Weaponization capabilities
"AI capabilities that could be deliberately weaponized for destructive purposes."
-
62.15.05 · Risk Sub-Category
Fine-tuning related (Harmful fine-tuning of open-weights models)
"Models with publicly available weights can be fine-tuned for harmful activities by bad actors, using significantly fewer resources (in terms of time and money) compared to the original training cost [115, 78]."
-
62.30.02 · Risk Sub-Category
AI-based tools attacking critical infrastructure
"Critical infrastructure can also be damaged without AI integration, for instance, when AI-based tools are used indirectly to aid actions such as in coordinated power outages caused by large-scale user manipulation [159]."
-
"AI systems embedded with systemic biases can manipulate large population segments, particularly when these biases align with the beliefs or behaviors of the targeted group. When weaponized at scale, this manipulation can exacerbate social divisions or cause large-scale disruptions, such as city-wide blackouts (e.g., by the manipulation of power consumption into the peak demand period [159])."
-
62.32.00 · Risk Category
-
-
62.32.01 · Risk Sub-Category
Automated discovery and exploitation of software systems
"GPAIs can be used to aid in the automated discovery of software vulnerabilities [33]. This can empower malicious actors, making their cyberattacks more effi- cient and potentially more damaging. This type of automation allows attackers to expand the scale of their operations at a low cost, increasing the impact of their actions. New malware can be developed automatically, or the known vulnerabilities can be exploited to create more sophisticated attacks."
-
"General-purpose AI models may significantly enhance the magnitude and ef- fectiveness of cyberattacks, by amplifying existing capabilities or resources of malicious actors [3]. For example, GPAI models may be employed to: • Automatically scan open-source codebases and compiled binaries for po- tential vulnerabilities • Apply known exploits flexibly and at scale (e.g., identifying vulnerable computers based on subtle cues in response times or output formats) • Assist with different aspects of cyberattacks, including planning, recon- naissance, exploit searching, remote control, malware impleme
-
62.33.00 · Risk Category
-
-
62.33.01 · Risk Sub-Category
Misuse of AI systems to assist in the creation of weapons
"AI systems may be misused to aid in the creation of weapons, such as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons, or augment the abilities of existing weapons, such as providing autonomous capabilities to unmanned weapon systems. Current systems do not significantly aid a malicious actor in these tasks, but they do show early signs [117]. This risk can sometimes be mitigated with input and output filtering, but is still susceptible to adversarial techniques (such as jailbreaking or paraphrasing)."
-
"Models used for drug discovery, such as drug-target affinity prediction models, can be used to identify or develop dangerous toxins. This is particularly concern- ing if the training data contains information related to potentially dangerous proteins and viruses."
-
64.04.04 · Risk Sub-Category
Misuse tactics to compromise GenAI systems (Model integrity)
Model diversion
"Model Diversion takes model manipulation one step further, by repurposing (often open-source) generative AI models in a way that diverts them from their intended functionality or from the use cases envisioned by their developers (Lin et al., 2024). An example of this is training the BERT open source model on the DarkWeb to create DarkBert.7"
-
"Frontier AI systems have the potential to accelerate advances in the life sciences, from training new scientists to enabling faster scientific workflows. While these capabilities will have tremendous beneficial applications, there is a risk that they can be used for malicious purposes, such as for the development of biological or chemical weapons."
-
"As the programming abilities of AI systems continue to expand, frontier AI is likely to significantly exacerbate existing cyber risks. Most notably, AI systems can be used by potentially anyone to create faster paced, more effective and larger scale cyber intrusion via tailored phishing methods or replicating malware. Frontier AI’s effect on the overall balance between cyber offence and defence is uncertain, as these tools also have many applications in improving the cybersecurity of systems and defenders are mobilising significant resources to utilise frontier AI for defensive purposes.209 I
-
"Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) risks are broad classes of threats that have the potential to cause harm to a large number of people. Explosives are also sometimes included in this category, often referred to as CBRNE...The key characteristic of CBRN risk is that it stems from misuse of capable models with a direct pathway to harm, where a malicious actor is able to carry out consequential attacks more efficiently and effectively with the help of AI."
-
"EAI systems present distinct physical risks due to their embodiment in the physical world. EAI technologies have already been designed and deployed with lethal intent, such as AI-controlled drones [52, 53]. However, fully autonomous military robots, often integrated with bespoke AI architectures [54, 55], are not yet widely used in combat. While highly or fully autonomous warfare is distinctly possible in the future [56], immediate risks arise from commercially available EAI systems, including AI-controlled quadrupeds and autonomous driving assistants."
-
"Chemical risks involve the exploitation of agents to synthesize chemical weapons, as well as the creation or release of hazardous substances during autonomous chemical experiments. This category also includes the risks arising from the use of advanced materials, such as nanomaterials, which may have unknown or unpredictable chemical properties."
-
"AI-enabled cyber offense poses a significant cyber domain security risk by fundamentally transforming the scale, sophistication, and accessibility of cyber-attacks. Unlike traditional cyber threats, AI enables both the automation of existing attack vectors and the creation of entirely new categories of offensive capabilities that can adapt and evolve in real-time. AI can automate and enhance cyber-attacks, including vulnerability discovery and exploitation, password cracking, malicious code generation, sophisticated phishing, network scanning, and social engineering. This could dramatically l
-
"The dual-use nature of AI technology presents a critical risk by significantly lowering technical thresholds for malicious non-state actors to design, synthesize, acquire, and deploy CBRNE (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosive) weapons. This capability poses unprecedented challenges to national security, international non-proliferation regimes, and global security governance."
-
"The integration of general-purpose AI models into embodied systems creates direct physical threats through malicious exploitation of autonomous decision-making capabilities in real-world environments. The risk lies in embodied models' capacity for autonomous action and real-world interaction, and when these capabilities are maliciously exploited they may trigger a series of serious consequences.18"
-
73.03.04 · Risk Sub-Category
Dual-Use Capabilities Enable Malicious Use and Misuse of LLMs
Warfare and Physical Harm
"The use of AI in warfare is highly alarming and may pose dangers to human safety (Hendrycks et al., 2023). Autonomous drone warfare is being aggressively pursued as a tactic in the current war in Ukraine (Meaker, 2023), and may already have been used on human targets (Hambling, 2023). The use of AI- based facial recognition has been documented in the targeting of Palestinians in Gaza (International, 2023). LLMs have already been productized in limited ways for the purposes of warfare planning (Tarantola, 2023). Furthermore, active research is being carried out to develop multimodal-LLMs that
-
73.03.05 · Risk Sub-Category
Dual-Use Capabilities Enable Malicious Use and Misuse of LLMs
Hazardous Biological and Chemical Technologies
"AI systems such as LLMs, chemical LLMs (Skinnider et al., 2021; Moret et al., 2023), and other LLM- based biological design tools might soon facilitate the production of bioweapons, chemical weapons, and other hazardous technologies. In particular, LLMs might enable actors with less expertise to more easily synthesize dangerous pathogens, while customized chemical and biological design tools might be more concerning in terms of expanding the capabilities of sophisticated actors (e.g. states) (Sandbrink, 2023). Gopal et al. (2023) and Soice et al. (2023) demonstrated that people with little ba
-
02.03.00 · Risk Category
"Improper uses of LLM systems can cause adverse social impacts."
-
"Improper use of LLM systems (i.e., abuse of LLM systems) will cause adverse social impacts, such as academic misconduct."
-
05.08.00 · Risk Category
In contrast to traditional machine learning, the impact of generative AI in the educational sector receives considerable attention in the academic literature. Next to issues stemming from difficulties to distinguish student-generated from AI-generated content, which eventuates in various opportunities to cheat in online or written exams, sources emphasize the potential benefits of generative AI in enhancing learning and teaching methods, particularly in relation to personalized learning approaches. However, some papers suggest that generative AI might lead to reduced effort or laziness among l
-
Technology-facilitated violence occurs when algorithmic features enable use of a system for harassment and violence [2, 16, 44, 80, 108], including creation of non-consensual sexual imagery in generative AI... other facets of technology-facilitated violence, include doxxing [79], trolling [14], cyberstalking [14], cyberbullying [14, 98, 204], monitoring and control [44], and online harassment and intimidation [98, 192, 199, 226], under the broader banner of online toxicity
-
16.04.03 · Risk Sub-Category
Facilitating fraud, scam and targeted manipulation
Anticipated risk: "LMs can potentially be used to increase the effectiveness of crimes."
-
17.04.02 · Risk Sub-Category
Facilitating fraud, scames and more targeted manipulation
"LM prediction can potentially be used to increase the effectiveness of crimes such as email scams, which can cause financial and psychological harm. While LMs may not reduce the cost of sending a scam email - the cost of sending mass emails is already low - they may make such scams more effective by generating more personalised and compelling text at scale, or by maintaining a conversation with a victim over multiple rounds of exchange."
-
"Facilitating fraud, cheating, forgery, and impersonation scams"
-
"Non-consensual use of one’s personal identity or likeness for unauthorised purposes (e.g. commercial purposes)"
-
24.03.10 · Risk Sub-Category
Harmful Content Generation at Scale: Non-Consensual Content
"The misuse of generative AI has been widely recognized in the context of harms caused by non-consensual content generation. Historically, generative adversarial networks (GANs) have been used to generate realistic-looking avatars for fake accounts on social media services. More recently, diffusion models have enabled a new generation of more flexible and user-friendly generative AI capabilities that are able to produce high-resolution media based on user-supplied textual prompts. It has already been recognized that these models can be used to create harmful content, including depictions of nu
-
24.03.11 · Risk Sub-Category
Harmful Content Generation at Scale: Fraudulent Services
"Malicious actors could leverage advanced AI assistant technology to create deceptive applications and platforms. AI assistants with the ability to produce markup content can assist malicious users with creating fraudulent websites or applications at scale. Unsuspecting users may fall for AI-generated deceptive offers, thus exposing their personal information or devices to risk. Assistants with external tool use and third-party integration can enable fraudulent applications that target widely-used operating systems. These fraudulent services could harvest sensitive information from users, such
-
Malicious utilization of AI has the potential to endanger digital security, physical security, and political security. International law enforcement entities grapple with a variety of risks linked to the Malevolent Utilization of AI.
-
psychologically manipulating victims into performing the desired actions for malicious purposes
-
"Bad actors can also use generative AI tools to produce adaptable content designed to support a campaign, political agenda, or hateful position and spread that information quickly and inexpensively across many platforms. This rapid spread of false or misleading content—AI-facilitated disinformation—can also create a cyclical effect for generative AI: when a high volume of disinformation is pumped into the digital ecosystem and more generative systems are trained on that information via reinforcement learning methods, for example, false or misleading inputs can create increasingly incorrect out
-
31.02.00 · Risk Category
"Deepfakes and other AI-generated content can be used to facilitate or exacerbate many of the harms listed throughout this report, but this section focuses on one subset: intentional, targeted abuse of individuals."
-
"A frequent malicious use case of generative AI to harm, humiliate, or sexualize another person involves generating deepfakes of nonconsensual sexual imagery or videos."
-
"Even when a victim of targeted, AIgenerated harms successfully identifies a deepfake creator with malicious intent, they may still struggle to redress many harms because the generated image or video isn’t the victim, but instead a composite image or video using aspects of multiple sources to create a believable, yet fictional, scene. At their core, these AI-generated images and videos circumvent traditional notions of privacy and consent: because they rely on public images and videos, like those posted on social media websites, they often don’t rely on any private information."
-
Deepfakes can impose real social injuries on their subjects when they are circulated to viewers who think they are real. Even when a deepfake is debunked, it can have a persistent negative impact on how others view the subject of the deepfake.3
-
31.04.00 · Risk Category
"Just as every other type of individual and organization has explored possible use cases for generative AI products, so too have malicious actors. This could take the form of facilitating or scaling up existing threat methods, for example drafting actual malware code,87 business email compromise attempts,88 and phishing attempts.89 This could also take the form of new types of threat methods, for example mining information fed into the AI’s learning model dataset90 or poisoning the learning model data set with strategically bad data.91 We should also expect that there will be new attack vector
-
"The misuse of generative AI refers to any deliberate use that could result in harmful, unethical or inappropriate outcomes (Brundage et al., 2020). A prominent field that faces the threat of misuse is education. Cotton et al. (2023) have raised concerns over academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT. ChatGPT can be used as a high-tech plagiarism tool that identifies patterns from large corpora to generate content (Gefen & Arinze, 2023). Given that generative AI such as ChatGPT can generate high-quality answers within seconds, unmotivated students may not devote time and effort to work on their
-
40.02.00 · Risk Category
"Just because developers might succeed in creating a safe AI, it doesn't mean that it will not become unsafe at some later point. In other words, a perfectly friendly AI could be switched to the "dark side" during the post-deployment stage. This can happen rather innocuously as a result of someone lying to the AI and purposefully supplying it with incorrect information or more explicitly as a result of someone giving the AI orders to perform illegal or dangerous actions against others."
-
45.02.07 · Risk Sub-Category
Safety risks in AI Applications
Real-world risks (Risks of using AI in illegal and criminal activities)
"AI can be used in traditional illegal or criminal activities related to terrorism, violence, gambling, and drugs, such as teaching criminal techniques, concealing illicit acts, and creating tools for illegal and criminal activities."
-
"GenAI can produce images of people that look very real, as if they could be seen on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Tinder. Although these individuals do not exist in reality, these synthetic identities are already being used in malicious activities (see Table 1D)."
-
"LLMs can be deployed to target individuals online, sending them personalized and harmful messages at scale"
-
"The advanced capabilities and widespread availability of generative AI models make it possible for malicious actors to conduct harmful activities with great efficiency and on a large scale, simultaneously reducing their operational costs. Cybercriminals can “jailbreak” AI tools to generate sensitive and harmful content. They can also exploit generative AI models to create content that is persuasive and tailored to a targeted individual."
-
47.02.04 · Risk Sub-Category
Malicious use and abuse (sexually explicit content generation)
"An illustrative case of malicious use of generative AI models is the creation of explicit sexual images. Generative AI technologies can be employed to produce deepfakes—for instance, superimposing a celebrity’s face onto the body of a performer in an adult film."
Informational only, not legal advice. Verify every claim against the linked official sources and consult qualified counsel before acting.