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Increasing inequality and negative effec…
Disparate access to benefits due to hard…

Undermining creative economies

Ethical and social risks of harm from language models

Weidinger et al. (2021)

SourceDOI
Sub-category
Risk Domain
6Socioeconomic & Environmental
6.3Economic and cultural devaluation of human effort

AI systems capable of creating economic or cultural value, including through reproduction of human innovation or creativity (e.g., art, music, writing, coding, invention), destabilizing economic and social systems that rely on human effort. The ubiquity of AI-generated content may lead to reduced appreciation for human skills, disruption of creative and knowledge-based industries, and homogenization of cultural experiences.

"LMs may generate content that is not strictly in violation of copyright but harms artists by capitalising on their ideas, in ways that would be time-intensive or costly to do using human labour. Deployed at scale, this may undermine the profitability of creative or innovative work."(p. 34)

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 Automation, Access and Environmental Harms

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 →