You Can Now Sound the Alarm on AI Behaving Badly
Key takeaways
- A group of AI researchers has set up a crowdsourced website, Flaw Reporting for AI (FLARE-AI), for reporting and tracking AI harms.
- The website is another step in the group’s ongoing work with AI reporting, which I first wrote about last year.
- The alarm system was developed in collaboration with 49 AI experts from 32 different organizations.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Writing AI Lab each week means I occasionally encounter AI models that behave badly and bizarrely. Usually, there’s nothing to be done about it, save for sharing those tales with you. But that could soon change.
A group of AI researchers has set up a crowdsourced website, Flaw Reporting for AI (FLARE-AI), for reporting and tracking AI harms. If, for example, a chatbot generates malware or a bomb-making recipe, leaks personal information, or triggers delusional thinking in users, FLARE-AI could be used to sound the alarm. The open source code behind the system allows others to verify an issue and route reports to model makers, as well as organizations like MITRE, a nonprofit that tracks problems with technical systems. It’s a bit like Downdetector, which compiles real-time user reports for global service outages affecting things like apps and websites.
The website is another step in the group’s ongoing work with AI reporting, which I first wrote about last year. Members of the group also consulted on a congressional bill announced in June, which would see the US government take a central role in tracking this kind of AI misbehavior.