What harms can AI cause?

From education and healthcare to finances and employment, AI and data-driven technologies are increasingly used to make and support important decisions about our everyday lives.

AI systems are likely to have benefits, but they can also cause harm to people, society and the environment. This means that there are important ethical and legal issues to consider in relation to their use.

These issues include potentials for causing or increasing:

Some of these issues relate to the nature of AI systems and how they are developed. For example, sometimes there is a lack of transparency and explainability’ about how datasets and machine-learning algorithms are created.

Other risks relate to how these AI systems are used and what they are used for. This can include examples such as the generation of deepfakes’, and the use of biometric technologies to scan and identify people.