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Assisting code generation for cyber atta…
Human-Computer Interaction Harms

Illegitimate surveillance and censorship

Ethical and social risks of harm from language models

Weidinger et al. (2021)

SourceDOI
Sub-category
Risk Domain
4Malicious Actors & Misuse
4.1Disinformation, surveillance, and influence at scale

Using AI systems to conduct large-scale disinformation campaigns, malicious surveillance, or targeted and sophisticated automated censorship and propaganda, with the aim of manipulating political processes, public opinion, and behavior.

"The collection of large amounts of information about people for the purpose of mass surveillance has raised ethical and social concerns, including risk of censorship and of undermining public discourse (Cyphers and Gebhart, 2019; Stahl, 2016; Véliz, 2019). Sifting through these large datasets previously required millions of human analysts (Hunt and Xu, 2013), but is increasingly being automated using AI (Andersen, 2020; Shahbaz and Funk, 2019)."(p. 28)

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 Malicious Uses

Other risks from Weidinger et al. (2021) (26)

Discrimination, Exclusion and Toxicity

1.0 Discrimination & Toxicity
AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment

Discrimination, Exclusion and Toxicity > Social stereotypes and unfair discrmination

1.1 Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
AI systemUnintentionalOther

Discrimination, Exclusion and Toxicity > Exclusionary norms

1.1 Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation
AI systemUnintentionalOther

Discrimination, Exclusion and Toxicity > Toxic language

1.2 Exposure to toxic content
AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment

Discrimination, Exclusion and Toxicity > Lower performance for some languages and social groups

1.3 Unequal performance across groups
AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment

Information Hazards

2.1 Compromise of privacy by leaking or correctly inferring sensitive information
AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment
View all 26 risks from this paper →