AI risks: Socioeconomic & Environmental

6 of the 24 risks sit in this group. Experts rate power centralisation the most severe of them, at 18.0% probability of a catastrophic outcome by 2030, with a pragmatic-mitigations estimate of 11.4% — the difference between the two estimates is 6.6 points.

Grouping 6 from the MIT AI Risk Repository, used under CC BY 4.0.

Every risk under Socioeconomic & Environmental

6.1Power centralisation18.0%AI-driven concentration of power and resources within certain entities or groups, especially those with access to or ownership of powerful AI systems, leading to inequitable distribution of benefits and increased societal inequality.
6.2AI and unemployment17.1%Widespread use of AI increasing social and economic inequalities, such as by automating jobs, reducing the quality of employment, or producing exploitative dependencies between workers and their employers.
6.6AI's environmental harm17.1%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.
6.4AI race dynamics16.6%AI developers or state-like actors competing in an AI 'race' by rapidly developing, deploying, and applying AI systems to maximize strategic or economic advantage, increasing the risk they release unsafe and error-prone systems.
6.5AI governance failure14.4%Inadequate regulatory frameworks and oversight mechanisms failing to keep pace with AI development, leading to ineffective governance and the inability to manage AI risks appropriately.
6.3Devaluation of human effort9.5%AI systems capable of creating economic or cultural value, including through reproduction of human innovation or creativity (e.g., art, music, writing, code, invention), can destabilize economic and social systems that rely on human effort. This may lead to reduced appreciation for human skills, disruption of creative and knowledge-based industries, and homogenization of cultural experiences due to the ubiquity of AI-generated content.