Authoritarian Surveillance, Censorship, and Use (General)
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.
"While new technologies like advanced AI assistants can aid in the production and dissemination of decision-guiding information, they can also enable and exacerbate threats to production and dissemination of reliable information and, without the proper mitigations, can be powerful targeting tools for oppression and control. Increasingly capable general-purpose AI assistants combined with our digital dependence in all walks of life increase the risk of authoritarian surveillance and censorship. In parallel, new sensors have flooded the modern world. The internet of things, phones, cars, homes, and social media platforms collect troves of data, which can then be integrated by advanced AI assistants with external tool-use and multimodal capabilities to assist malicious actors in identifying, targeting, manipulating, or coercing citizens."(p. 76)
Part of Malicious Uses
Other risks from Gabriel et al. (2024) (69)
Capability failures
7.3 Lack of capability or robustnessCapability failures > Lack of capability for task
7.3 Lack of capability or robustnessCapability failures > Difficult to develop metrics for evaluating benefits or harms caused by AI assistants
6.5 Governance failureCapability failures > Safe exploration problem with widely deployed AI assistants
7.3 Lack of capability or robustnessGoal-related failures
7.1 AI pursuing its own goals in conflict with human goals or valuesGoal-related failures > Misaligned consequentialist reasoning
7.3 Lack of capability or robustness