---
title: "AI harm"
description: "A negative consequence of building or using an AI system for a person, a group, an organisation, society or the environment."
canonical: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/ai-harm
author: "Jorge García Aibar"
license: "CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)"
doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197
version: "0.5.0"
updated: 2026-09-24
---

# AI harm

A negative consequence of building or using an AI system for a person, a group, an organisation, society or the environment. The book names each harm by the level it lands on, its mechanism, a testable failure mode and the control that catches it, mapped to the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy [1].

- Developed in: [Harms atlas](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/resources/harms)
- Chapters: [ch. 03, Values & Principles](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/values-and-principles)
- In the glossary chapter: https://aigovernanceengineer.com/bok/glossary#t-ai-harm

## Sources

[1] The AI Risk Repository: a meta-review, database, and taxonomy of risks from artificial intelligence (Domain Taxonomy of 7 domains and 24 subdomains; CC BY 4.0). Slattery, Saeri, Grundy et al., Patterns (Cell Press). 2026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2026.101517 (verified: primary)