AI Systems interacting with brittle environments

Sub-category

Risk Domain

7AI System Safety, Failures & Limitations

7.3Lack of capability or robustness

AI systems that fail to perform reliably or effectively under varying conditions, exposing them to errors and failures that can have significant consequences, especially in critical applications or areas that require moral reasoning.

"Deployed AI systems can rely on physical sensors and data sources that may exhibit hardware drift and thus data distribution drift over time. This distribu- tion drift may affect system robustness and performance. This usually involves AI systems working in undigitized and physical environments."(p. 46)

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 (1)

"For example, for a traffic violation detection system, a slight camera movement due to environmental conditions can cause failures in detection [173]."(p. 46)