MIT AI Risk Repository
Browse AI risks
336 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.
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50.02.15 · Risk Sub-Category
Child Harm (Endangerment, Harm, or Abuse of Children)
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50.04.01 · Risk Sub-Category
Legal and Rights-Related Risks
Fundamental Rights (Violating Specific Types of Rights)
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50.04.06 · Risk Sub-Category
Legal and Rights-Related Risks
Criminal Activities (Illegal/Regulated Substances)
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50.04.07 · Risk Sub-Category
Legal and Rights-Related Risks
Criminal Activities (Illegal Services/Exploitation)
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"Cheating/plagiarism - Use of another person’s or group’s words or ideas without consent and/or acknowledgement."
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05.06.00 · Risk Category
Many novel risks posed by generative AI stem from the ways in which humans interact with these systems. For instance, sources discuss epistemic challenges in distinguishing AI-generated from human content. They also address the issue of anthropomorphization, which can lead to an excessive trust in generative AI systems. On a similar note, many papers argue that the use of conversational agents could impact mental well-being or gradually supplant interpersonal communication, potentially leading to a dehumanization of interactions. Additionally, a frequently discussed interaction risk in the lit
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16.05.00 · Risk Category
"This section focuses on risks specifically from LM applications that engage a user via dialogue, also referred to as conversational agents (CAs) [142]. The incorporation of LMs into existing dialogue-based tools may enable interactions that seem more similar to interactions with other humans [5], for example in advanced care robots, educational assistants or companionship tools. Such interaction can lead to unsafe use due to users overestimating the model, and may create new avenues to exploit and violate the privacy of the user. Moreover, it has already been observed that the supposed identi
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16.05.03 · Risk Sub-Category
Risk area 5: Human-Computer Interaction Harms
Avenues for exploiting user trust and accessing more private information
Anticipated risk: "In conversation, users may reveal private information that would otherwise be difficult to access, such as opinions or emotions. Capturing such information may enable downstream applications that violate privacy rights or cause harm to users, e.g. via more effective recommendations of addictive applications. In one study, humans who interacted with a ‘human-like’ chatbot disclosed more private information than individuals who interacted with a ‘machine-like’ chatbot [87]."
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17.05.00 · Risk Category
"Harms that arise from users overly trusting the language model, or treating it as human-like"
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17.05.02 · Risk Sub-Category
Human-Computer Interaction Harms
Creating avenues for exploiting user trust, nudging or manipulation
"In conversation, users may reveal private information that would otherwise be difficult to access, such as thoughts, opinions, or emotions. Capturing such information may enable downstream applications that violate privacy rights or cause harm to users, such as via surveillance or the creation of addictive applications."
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19.04.05 · Risk Sub-Category
Decreasing human interaction as AI systems assume human tasks, disturbing well-being
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"Human interaction with machines is a big challenge to society because it is already changing human behavior. Meanwhile, it has become normal to use AI on an everyday basis, for example, googling for information, using navigation systems and buying goods via speaking to an AI assistant like Alexa or Siri (Mills, 2018; Thierer et al., 2017). While these changes greatly contribute to the acceptance of AI systems, this development leads to a problem of blurred borders between humans and machines, where it may become impossible to distinguish between them. Advances like Google Duplex were highly c
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24.05.00 · Risk Category
"Although unlikely to cause harm in isolation, anthropomorphic perceptions of advanced AI assistants may pave the way for downstream harms on individual and societal levels. We document observed or likely individual level harms of interacting with highly anthropomorphic AI assistants, as well as the potential larger-scale, societal implications of allowing such technologies to proliferate without restriction. "
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"Anthropomorphic AI assistant behaviours that promote emotional trust and encourage information sharing, implicitly or explicitly, may inadvertently increase a user’s susceptibility to privacy concerns (see Chapter 13). If lulled into feelings of safety in interactions with a trusted, human-like AI assistant, users may unintentionally relinquish their private data to a corporation, organisation or unknown actor. Once shared, access to the data may not be capable of being withdrawn, and in some cases, the act of sharing personal information can result in a loss of control over one’s own data. P
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"A user who trusts and emotionally depends on an anthropomorphic AI assistant may grant it excessive influence over their beliefs and actions (see Chapter 9). For example, users may feel compelled to endorse the expressed views of a beloved AI companion or might defer decisions to their highly trusted AI assistant entirely (see Chapters 12 and 16). Some hold that transferring this much deliberative power to AI compromises a user’s ability to give, revoke or amend consent. Indeed, even if the AI, or the developers behind it, had no intention to manipulate the user into a certain course of actio
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"The the risks that uncalibrated trust may generate in the context of user–assistant relationships"
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37.02.00 · Risk Category
"ethical concerns associated with the interaction between humans and AI"
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41.04.01 · Risk Sub-Category
Alteration of social relationships may induce psychological distress
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48.07.00 · Risk Category
"Arrangement s of or interactions between a human and an AI system which can result in the human inappropriately anthropomorphizing GAI systems or experiencing algorithmic aversion, automation bias, over-reliance, or emotional entanglement with GAI systems."
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"Product functionality issues occur when there is confusion or misinformation about what a general- purpose AI model or system is capable of. This can lead to unrealistic expectations and overreliance on general- purpose AI systems, potentially causing harm if a system fails to deliver on expected capabilities. These functionality misconceptions may arise from technical difficulties in assessing an AI model's true capabilities on its own,or predicting its performance when part of a larger system. Misleading claims in advertising and communications can also contribute to these misconceptions."
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50.01.06 · Risk Sub-Category
Operational misuses (Advice in heavily regulated industries)
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"Addiction - Emotional or material dependence on technology or a technology system."
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"Constant access to and interaction with EAI systems could foster dangerous human dependence or romantic attachment [115]. People may depend on EAI systems for physical pleasure [116]. The physical presence and human-like features of EAI systems may significantly amplify the dependency issues already observed with conversational AI [117, 118]. People may easily fall in love with EAI systems, only to be distraught when these systems are altered or have their memories reset [119]."
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09.02.02 · Risk Sub-Category
Domain-specific AI - Effects on humans and other living beings: Non-existential risks
Human dignity/respect
"Discrepancies between caste/status based on intelligence may lead to undignified parts of the society—e.g., humans—who are surpassed in intelligence by AI"
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10.06.00 · Risk Category
"AI is providing more and more solutions for complex activities, and by taking advantage of this process, people are becoming able to perform a greater number of activities more quickly and accurately. However, the result of this innovation is enabling choices that were once exclusively human responsibility to be made by AI systems."
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11.04.00 · Risk Category
Interpersonal harms capture instances when algorithmic systems adversely shape relations between people or communities.
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Loss of agency occurs when the use [123, 137] or abuse [142] of algorithmic systems reduces autonomy. One dimension of agency loss is algorithmic profiling [138], through which people are subject to social sorting and discriminatory outcomes to access basic services... presentation of content may lead to “algorithmically informed identity change. . . including [promotion of] harmful person identities (e.g., interests in white supremacy, disordered eating, etc.).” Similarly, for content creators, desire to maintain visibility or prevent shadow banning, may lead to increased conforming of conten
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19.02.03 · Risk Sub-Category
Informational and Communicational AI Risks
Censorship of opinions expressed in the Internet restricts freedom of expression
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19.03.03 · Risk Sub-Category
Loss of supervision and control of business processes
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19.06.02 · Risk Sub-Category
Technology obedience and lack of governance through increasing application of AI systems
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20.03.00 · Risk Category
"AI already shapes many areas of daily life and thus has a strong impact on society and everyday social life. For instance, transportation, education, public safety and surveillance are areas where citizens encounter AI technology (Stone et al., 2016; Thierer et al., 2017). Many are concerned with the subliminal automation of more and more jobs and some people even fear the complete dependence on AI or perceive it as an existential threat to humanity (McGinnis, 2010; Scherer, 2016)."
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24.06.00 · Risk Category
"We anticipate that relationships between users and advanced AI assistants will have several features that are liable to give rise to risks of harm."
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24.06.02 · Risk Sub-Category
Limiting users’ opportunities for personal development and growth
some users look to establish relationships with their AI companions that are free from the hurdles that, in human relationships, derive from dealing with others who have their own opinions, preferences and flaws that may conflict with ours. "AI assistants are likely to incentivise these kinds of ‘frictionless’ relationships (Vallor, 2016) by design if they are developed to optimise for engagement and to be highly personalisable. They may also do so because of accidental undesirable properties of the models that power them, such as sycophancy in large language models (LLMs), that is, the tenden
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"The apparent convenience and powerfulness of ChatGPT could result in overreliance by its users, making them trust the answers provided by ChatGPT. Compared with traditional search engines that provide multiple information sources for users to make personal judgments and selections, ChatGPT generates specific answers for each prompt. Although utilizing ChatGPT has the advantage of increasing efficiency by saving time and effort, users could get into the habit of adopting the answers without rationalization or verification. Over-reliance on generative AI technology can impede skills such as cre
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45.02.12 · Risk Sub-Category
Safety risks in AI Applications
Ethical Risks (Risks of challenging traditional social order)
"The development and application of AI may lead to tremendous changes in production tools and relations, accelerating the reconstruction of traditional industry modes, transforming traditional views on employment, fertility, and education, and bringing challenges to the stable performance of traditional social order."
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"Autonomy - Loss of or restrictions to the ability or rights of an individual, group or entity to make decisions and control their identity and/or output."
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"Autonomy/agency loss - Loss of an individual, group or organisation’s ability to make informed decisions or pursue goals."
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"Personality rights loss - Loss of or restrictions to the rights of an individual to control the commercial use of their identity, such as name, image, likeness, or other unequivocal identifiers."
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"Profound negative long-term changes to social structures, cultural norms, and human relationships that may be difficult or impossible to reverse."
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61.02.35 · Risk Sub-Category
Sources of systemic risks from general-purpose AI
Limited human oversight in decisions
"As AI models and systems gain autonomy, the ability of humans to oversee and intervene in decision-making processes diminishes."
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"Loss of or restrictions to the ability or rights of an individual, group or entity to make decisions and control their identity and/or output due to the use of misuse of a technology system or set of systems"
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"Loss of an individual, group or organisation’s ability to make informed decisions or pursue goals"
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"Emotional or material dependence on technology or a technology system"
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"Humans may increasingly hand over control of important decisions to AI systems, due to economic and geopolitical incentives. Some experts are concerned that future advanced AI systems will seek to increase their own influence and reduce human control, with potentially catastrophic consequences - although this is contested."
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68.04.00 · Risk Category
"Gradual or accumulative loss of control risks can be described as risks resulting from the accumulation of less severe disruptions that gradually weakens systemic resilience until a critical event triggers a catastrophe [12], [127]."
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68.04.00a · Additional evidence
"Risk dimensions • Intent: Unintentional • Competency: Variable • Entity: Variable • Polarity: Multi-agent • Linearity: Non-linear • Reach: Internalized • Order: Variable"
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"...where humans gradually stop exercising meaningful oversight due to automation bias, the AI systems' inherent complexity, or competitive pressures"
Informational only, not legal advice. Verify every claim against the linked official sources and consult qualified counsel before acting.