Why AI Needs Governance: A Taxonomy of Harms and Risks

The documented ways AI systems hurt people — bias, privacy invasion, safety failures, security exploits, information pollution, manipulation, and systemic risks — organised into the taxonomy that risk-assessment work is built on, with the real cases behind each category.

Content current as of 2026-09.

Lessons

1. Why govern AI at all?
2. A map of AI harms
3. Bias: how discrimination gets automated
4. Privacy, safety, and security
5. Information, manipulation, livelihoods, and the planet
6. Systemic risks, the accountability gap, and keeping score