Peter Slattery

Peter Slattery, Alexander K. Saeri, Emily A. C. Grundy et al.

The risks posed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) are of considerable concern to academics, auditors, policymakers, AI companies, and the public. However, a lack of shared understanding of AI risks can impede our ability to comprehensively discuss, research, and react to them. This paper addresses this gap by creating an AI Risk Repository to serve as a common frame of reference. This comprises a living database of 777 risks extracted from 43 taxonomies, which can be filtered based on two overarching taxonomies and easily accessed, modified, and updated via our website and online spreadsheets. We construct our Repository with a systematic review of taxonomies and other structured classifications of AI risk followed by an expert consultation. We develop our taxonomies of AI risk using a best-fit framework synthesis. Our high-level Causal Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies each risk by its causal factors (1) Entity: Human, AI; (2) Intentionality: Intentional, Unintentional; and (3) Timing: Pre-deployment; Post-deployment. Our mid-level Domain Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies risks into seven AI risk domains: (1) Discrimination & toxicity, (2) Privacy & security, (3) Misinformation, (4) Malicious actors & misuse, (5) Human-computer interaction, (6) Socioeconomic & environmental, and (7) AI system safety, failures, & limitations. These are further divided into 23 subdomains. The AI Risk Repository is, to our knowledge, the first attempt to rigorously curate, analyze, and extract AI risk frameworks into a publicly accessible, comprehensive, extensible, and categorized risk database. This creates a foundation for a more coordinated, coherent, and complete approach to defining, auditing, and managing the risks posed by AI systems.

Alexander K. Saeri, Sophia Lloyd George, Jess Graham et al.

Organizations and governments that develop, deploy, use, and govern AI must coordinate on effective risk mitigation. However, the landscape of AI risk mitigation frameworks is fragmented, uses inconsistent terminology, and has gaps in coverage. This paper introduces a preliminary AI Risk Mitigation Taxonomy to organize AI risk mitigations and provide a common frame of reference. The Taxonomy was developed through a rapid evidence scan of 13 AI risk mitigation frameworks published between 2023-2025, which were extracted into a living database of 831 AI risk mitigations. The mitigations were iteratively clustered & coded to create the Taxonomy. The preliminary AI Risk Mitigation Taxonomy organizes mitigations into four categories and 23 subcategories: (1) Governance & Oversight: Formal organizational structures and policy frameworks that establish human oversight mechanisms and decision protocols; (2) Technical & Security: Technical, physical, and engineering safeguards that secure AI systems and constrain model behaviors; (3) Operational Process: processes and management frameworks governing AI system deployment, usage, monitoring, incident handling, and validation; and (4) Transparency & Accountability: formal disclosure practices and verification mechanisms that communicate AI system information and enable external scrutiny. The rapid evidence scan and taxonomy construction also revealed several cases where terms like 'risk management' and 'red teaming' are used widely but refer to different responsible actors, actions, and mechanisms of action to reduce risk. This Taxonomy and associated mitigation database, while preliminary, offers a starting point for collation and synthesis of AI risk mitigations. It also offers an accessible, structured way for different actors in the AI ecosystem to discuss and coordinate action to reduce risks from AI.