AI risk

An umbrella term for potential harms from the development and use of AI, usually sorted into three families. Misusemisuse, n.: People deliberately using AI to cause harm — for scams, harassment, propaganda, hacking or weapons — as opposed to harm from AI making mistakes or pursuing goals of its own. risks arise when people deliberately use AI to cause harm, as in fraud with deepfakesdeepfake, n.: A fake but realistic video, photo or voice recording made with AI that puts words in a real person's mouth or shows them in a scene that never happened., cyberattacksAI-enabled cyberattack, n.: A computer attack in which criminals or spies use AI to help — writing convincing scam messages, finding weak spots, producing malicious code, or even running much of the hacking by itself. or weapons development (CBRN riskCBRN risk, n.: The danger that AI could help someone make or use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons — for example, by explaining hard technical steps an attacker could not work out alone.). Accident risks arise when systems fail or act against their designers' intentions, from biased or brittle outputs to misalignmentmisalignment, n.: When an AI system's goals or behavior part ways with what its makers or users intended — from flattering users to, in the most feared cases, working against people. and loss of controlloss of control, n.: A situation in which people can no longer oversee, correct or switch off an AI system, and have no reliable way of getting that power back.. Structural or systemic risks emerge from how AI reshapes its environment — race dynamicsAI arms race, n.: A competition among countries or companies to build the most powerful AI first, in which fear of falling behind pushes everyone to move faster and cut corners on safety., concentration of power, labor displacementtechnological unemployment, n.: Joblessness caused by machines or software taking over work that people used to be paid for, faster than new kinds of work appear for them., erosion of the information ecosystem — without any single actor intending them. Risks are also graded by severity, from everyday harms to catastrophiccatastrophic risk, n.: The risk that AI could cause disaster on a massive scale — many deaths or enormous damage — through weapons, cyberattacks or systems escaping human control. Several laws now define it precisely. and existentialexistential risk, n.: A danger that could end humanity, or shut it out of a good future forever. Some experts count advanced AI among the largest such risks; others think this worry is overblown. ones, and are managed through AI governanceAI governance, n.: The rules, institutions and habits that shape how AI is built and used — from laws and treaties to technical standards and a company's own review processes., capability evaluationsdangerous capability evaluation, n.: A test of whether an AI system can do things that could cause severe harm in the wrong hands or on its own — such as helping make a bioweapon, hacking computers or copying itself., red teamingred teaming, n.: Deliberately attacking your own AI system — trying to make it misbehave, leak secrets or help with harm — so that weaknesses are found before real adversaries or users find them. and risk-management frameworks such as the NIST AI Risk Management FrameworkNIST AI Risk Management Framework, prop. n.: A free, voluntary guide from the US government's standards agency that helps organizations spot, measure and reduce the risks of the AI systems they build or use..

Our AI risk register separates misuse, malfunction and systemic risks, and assigns each an owner.