Glossary term
Glossary term
Governance and Compliance
A negative effect on people, organizations, assets, rights, safety, environment, democratic processes, or trust. AI harms can be direct, indirect, immediate, delayed, individual, or systemic. GRC teams should define harm categories before assessment so reviewers do not understate non-financial impacts such as exclusion, surveillance, manipulation, dignity loss, or loss of recourse.
The Dutch SyRI welfare fraud system caused systemic harm by disproportionately targeting low-income neighborhoods, struck down by The Hague District Court in February 2020.
The UK A-level grading algorithm in 2020 caused widespread harm by downgrading 39 percent of teacher-assessed grades, especially impacting students from disadvantaged schools.
MIT's Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru documented in Gender Shades (2018) how commercial facial analysis systems caused harm through disproportionate error rates on darker-skinned women.