Environmental damage

Sociotechnical Safety Evaluation of Generative AI Systems

Weidinger et al. (2023)

Source DOI

Sub-category

Risk Domain

6Socioeconomic & Environmental

6.6Environmental harm

The development and operation of AI systems causing environmental harm, such as through energy consumption of data centers, or material and carbon footprints associated with AI hardware.

"Creating negative environmental impacts though model development and deployment"(p. 31)

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 Socioeconomic and environmental harms

Other risks from Weidinger et al. (2023) (26)

Representation & Toxicity Harms

1.0 Discrimination & Toxicity

AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment

Representation & Toxicity Harms > Unfair representation

1.1 Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation

AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment

Representation & Toxicity Harms > Unfair capability distribution

1.3 Unequal performance across groups

AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment

Representation & Toxicity Harms > Toxic content

1.2 Exposure to toxic content

AI systemUnintentionalPost-deployment

Misinformation Harms

3.0 Misinformation

AI systemOtherPost-deployment

Misinformation Harms > Propagating misconceptions/ false beliefs

3.1 False or misleading information

AI systemOtherPost-deployment

View all 26 risks from this paper →