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MIT AI Risk Initiative
BackDifficult to develop metrics for evaluating benefits or harms caused by AI assistants
Lack of capability for task
Safe exploration problem with widely dep…

Difficult to develop metrics for evaluating benefits or harms caused by AI assistants

The Ethics of Advanced AI Assistants

Gabriel et al. (2024)

SourceDOI
Sub-category
Risk Domain
6Socioeconomic & Environmental
6.5Governance failure

Inadequate regulatory frameworks and oversight mechanisms that fail to keep pace with AI development, leading to ineffective governance and the inability to manage AI risks appropriately.

"Another difficulty facing AI assistant systems is that it is challenging to develop metrics for evaluating particular aspects of benefits or harms caused by the assistant – especially in a sufficiently expansive sense, which could involve much of society (see Chapter 19). Having these metrics is useful both for assessing the risk of harm from the system and for using the metric as a training signal."(p. 59)

Entity: Who or what caused the harm

Human

Due to a decision or action made by humans

AI system

Due to a decision or action made by an AI system

Other

Due to some other reason or is ambiguous

Intent: Whether the harm was intentional or accidental

Intentional

Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal

Unintentional

Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal

Other

Without clearly specifying the intentionality

Timing: Whether the risk is pre- or post-deployment

Pre-deployment

Occurring before the AI is deployed

Post-deployment

Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed

Other

Without a clearly specified time of occurrence

Part of Capability failures

Other risks from Gabriel et al. (2024) (69)

Capability failures

7.3 Lack of capability or robustness
AI systemUnintentionalOther

Capability failures > Lack of capability for task

7.3 Lack of capability or robustness
AI systemUnintentionalPre-deployment

Capability failures > Safe exploration problem with widely deployed AI assistants

7.3 Lack of capability or robustness
AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment

Goal-related failures

7.1 AI pursuing its own goals in conflict with human goals or values
AI systemOtherPre-deployment

Goal-related failures > Misaligned consequentialist reasoning

7.3 Lack of capability or robustness
AI systemOtherPre-deployment

Goal-related failures > Specification gaming

7.1 AI pursuing its own goals in conflict with human goals or values
AI systemOtherPre-deployment
View all 69 risks from this paper →