AI Governance Engineer
GitHub

AI hazard

By Updated

In the OECD's definition, an event or series of events where the development, use or malfunction of an AI system could plausibly lead to an AI incident 1. A hazard is harm that has not happened yet; a near miss is a hazard a control interrupted.

Developed in
ch. 17, Incident, hazard, issue and serious incident
Chapters
ch. 17, Incidents
Contrast with
AI incident
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Where it is used

One chapter of the Body of Knowledge uses the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

  • 17 · Incidents Opening 4 mentions
  • Issue (versus incident)

    A defect, deviation or control weakness that has not produced a harmful event, such as an eval regression in staging or a drift alert.

  • Near miss

    A hazard that a control, or luck, interrupted before harm occurred: the guardrail blocked the exfiltration, the reviewer caught the invented dosage.

  • Serious incident

    Under AI Act Article 3(49), an incident or malfunction of an AI system that directly or indirectly leads to (a) a death or serious harm to health, (b) serious…

  • Widespread infringement

    Under AI Act Article 3(61), an act or omission contrary to Union law protecting individuals' interests that harms, or is likely to harm, the collective…

  • AI system

    For governance, the object the AI definition brings into scope.

Sources

  1. [1] "Name it to tame it: defining AI incidents and hazards" (summary of the OECD paper "Defining AI incidents and related terms", doi 10.1787/d1a8d965-en). OECD.AI. 2024-05-17. https://oecd.ai/en/wonk/defining-ai-incidents-and-hazards (verified: primary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). AI hazard. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/ai-hazard. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026aihazard,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{AI hazard}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/ai-hazard}
}