A Taxonomy of Systemic Risks from General-Purpose AI

Understand

Through a systematic review of academic literature, we propose a taxonomy of systemic risks associated with artificial intelligence (AI), in particular general-purpose AI.

• Following the EU AI Act's definition, we consider systemic risks as large-scale threats that can affect entire societies or economies.
• Starting with an initial pool of 1,781 documents, we analyzed 86 selected papers to identify 13 categories of systemic risks and 50 contributing sources.
• Our findings reveal a complex landscape of potential threats, ranging from environmental harm and structural discrimination to governance failures and loss of control.