Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems
The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
GCRI · Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems
Spatial intelligenceObservations, models and their uncertainty in one view
AI and autonomous systems as a risk field studies how learned models, software agents and robots behave in the real world, how their behaviour can be measured and how their failures propagate into the institutions, infrastructures and lives that depend on them. This page defines the field, explains why it matters for society, sets out what experts study and shows how it connects to other risks.
How training data, objectives and architectures shape behaviour, including failure modes.
How systems are tested, monitored and kept under meaningful human control.
How sensing, planning and control interact in robots and vehicles.
The field combines artificial intelligence and machine learning, the methods by which systems learn from data, with AI evaluation and assurance engineering, the engineering discipline of testing and assuring them. It extends to robotics and automation, where AI controls physical machines, and to high-performance, cloud and edge computing, the infrastructure that trains and runs models.
As a risk field it is defined by consequences: what happens when a model generalizes badly, when an agent misuses a tool, when a robot misreads its environment, or when many systems share the same flaw. social and behavioural science is part of the field because the effects of AI depend on how people use, trust and contest it.
Fig.How GCRI, GRF and GRA share one field while the authorities decide. Design, not a record.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Do evaluations measure what they claim, and do results generalize? See Model evaluation.
How should authority be delegated to systems that act? See Agentic systems and Autonomous physical systems.
How can models be attacked, and how can AI change cyber offence and defence? See AI and cyber security.
How does AI change science and public services? See AI in science and AI and public services.
What does AI depend on, and whom does it affect? See Compute and energy and Labour and social effects.
AI connects to cybersecurity, energy, labour markets, finance and public trust. Dependencies and consequences explains those links. Governance is convened through AI and Digital Governance at The Global Risk Forum (GRF), and financial-sector model risk is studied through AI and Financial Model Risk at The Global Risk Alliance (GRA).
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