MIT AI Risk Repository
Browse AI risks
14 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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"AI discrimination is a challenge raised by many researchers and governments and refers to the prevention of bias and injustice caused by the actions of AI systems (Bostrom & Yudkowsky, 2014; Weyerer & Langer, 2019). If the dataset used to train an algorithm does not reflect the real world accurately, the AI could learn false associations or prejudices and will carry those into its future data processing. If an AI algorithm is used to compute information relevant to human decisions, such as hiring or applying for a loan or mortgage, biased data can lead to discrimination against parts of the s
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"Privacy and safety deals with the challenge of protecting the human right for privacy and the necessary steps to secure individual data from unauthorized external access. Many organizations employ AI technology to gather data without any notice or consent from affected citizens (Coles, 2018)."
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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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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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"Frey and Osborne (2017) analyzed over 700 different jobs regarding their potential for replacement and automation, finding that 47 percent of the analyzed jobs are at risk of being completely substituted by robots or algorithms. This substitution of workforce can have grave impacts on unemployment and the social status of members of society (Stone et al., 2016)"
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20.01.00 · Risk Category
"This area strongly focuses on the control of AI by means of mechanisms like laws, standards or norms that are already established for different technological applications. Here, there are some challenges special to AI that need to be addressed in the near future, including the governance of autonomous intelligence systems, responsibility and accountability for algorithms as well as privacy and data security."
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"Governance of autonomous intelligence systemaddresses the question of how to control autonomous systems in general. Since nowadays it is very difficult to conceive automated decisions based on AI, the latter is often referred to as a ‘black box’ (Bleicher, 2017). This black box may take unforeseeable actions and cause harm to humanity."
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"The challenge of responsibility and accountability is an important concept for the process of governance and regulation. It addresses the question of who is to be held legally responsible for the actions and decisions of AI algorithms. Although humans operate AI systems, questions of legal responsibility and liability arise. Due to the self-learning ability of AI algorithms, the operators or developers cannot predict all actions and results. Therefore, a careful assessment of the actors and a regulation for transparent and explainable AI systems is necessary (Helbing et al., 2017; Wachter et
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"Ethical challenges are widely discussed in the literature and are at the heart of the debate on how to govern and regulate AI technology in the future (Bostrom & Yudkowsky, 2014; IEEE, 2017; Wirtz et al., 2019). Lin et al. (2008, p. 25) formulate the problem as follows: “there is no clear task specification for general moral behavior, nor is there a single answer to the question of whose morality or what morality should be implemented in AI”. Ethical behavior mostly depends on an underlying value system. When AI systems interact in a public environment and influence citizens, they are expecte
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"AI rulemaking for humans can be the result of the decision process of an AI system when the information computed is used to restrict or direct human behavior. The decision process of AI is rational and depends on the baseline programming. Without the access to emotions or a consciousness, decisions of an AI algorithm might be good to reach a certain specified goal, but might have unintended consequences for the humans involved (Banerjee et al., 2017)."
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"Compatibility of machine and human value judgment refers to the challenge whether human values can be globally implemented into learning AI systems without the risk of developing an own or even divergent value system to govern their behavior and possibly become harmful to humans."
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"Moral dilemmas can occur in situations where an AI system has to choose between two possible actions that are both conflicting with moral or ethical values. Rule systems can be implemented into the AI program, but it cannot be ensured that these rules are not altered by the learning processes, unless AI systems are programed with a “slave morality” (Lin et al., 2008, p. 32), obeying rules at all cost, which in turn may also have negative effects and hinder the autonomy of the AI system."
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20.01.01.a · Additional evidence
Governance of autonomous intelligence systems
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"Social acceptance and trust in AI is highly interconnected with the other challenges mentioned. Acceptance and trust result from the extent to which an individual’s subjective expectation corresponds to the real effect of AI on the individual’s life. In the case of transparent and explainable AI, acceptance may be high but if an individual encounters harmful AI behavior like discrimination, acceptance for AI will eventually decline (COMEST, 2017).
Informational only, not legal advice. Verify every claim against the linked official sources and consult qualified counsel before acting.