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MIT AI Risk Initiative
BackDemeaning social groups
Stereotyping social groups
Erasing social groups

Demeaning social groups

Sociotechnical Harms of Algorithmic Systems: Scoping a Taxonomy for Harm Reduction

Shelby et al. (2023)

SourceDOI
Sub-category
Risk Domain
1Discrimination & Toxicity
1.1Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation

Unequal treatment of individuals or groups by AI, often based on race, gender, or other sensitive characteristics, resulting in unfair outcomes and unfair representation of those groups.

Demeaning of social groups to occur when they are when they are “cast as being lower status and less deserving of respect"... discourses, images, and language used to marginalize or oppress a social group... Controlling images include forms of human-animal confusion in image tagging systems(p. 728)

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 Representational Harms

Other risks from Shelby et al. (2023) (24)

Representational Harms

1.1 Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
OtherUnintentionalPost-deployment

Representational Harms > Stereotyping social groups

1.1 Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment

Representational Harms > Erasing social groups

1.3 Unequal performance across groups
HumanUnintentionalOther

Representational Harms > Alienating social groups

1.1 Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment

Representational Harms > Denying people the opportunity to self-identify

1.1 Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment

Representational Harms > Reifying essentialist categories

1.1 Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment
View all 24 risks from this paper →