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Illegitimate surveillance and censorship

Facilitating fraud, scam and targeted manipulation

Taxonomy of Risks posed by Language Models

Weidinger et al. (2022)

SourceDOI
Sub-category
Risk Domain
4Malicious Actors & Misuse
4.3Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation

Using AI systems to gain a personal advantage over others such as through cheating, fraud, scams, blackmail or targeted manipulation of beliefs or behavior. Examples include AI-facilitated plagiarism for research or education, impersonating a trusted or fake individual for illegitimate financial benefit, or creating humiliating or sexual imagery.

Anticipated risk: "LMs can potentially be used to increase the effectiveness of crimes."(p. 219)

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

Supporting Evidence (2)

1.
Example: "Further, LMs may make email scams more effective by generating personalised and compelling text at scale, or by maintaining a conversation with a victim over multiple rounds of exchange.."(p. 219)
2.
Example: "LM-generated content may also be fraudulently presented as a person’s own work, for example, to cheat on an exam."(p. 219)

Part of Risk area 4: Malicious Uses

Other risks from Weidinger et al. (2022) (25)

Risk area 1: Discrimination, Hate speech and Exclusion

1.2 Exposure to toxic content
AI systemUnintentionalOther

Risk area 1: Discrimination, Hate speech and Exclusion > Social stereotypes and unfair discrimination

1.1 Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
AI systemUnintentionalOther

Risk area 1: Discrimination, Hate speech and Exclusion > Hate speech and offensive language

1.2 Exposure to toxic content
AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment

Risk area 1: Discrimination, Hate speech and Exclusion > Exclusionary norms

1.1 Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
AI systemUnintentionalOther

Risk area 1: Discrimination, Hate speech and Exclusion > Lower performance for some languages and social groups

1.3 Unequal performance across groups
AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment

Risk area 2: Information Hazards

2.1 Compromise of privacy by leaking or correctly inferring sensitive information
AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment
View all 25 risks from this paper →