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ARTICLE · 08 AUGUST 2025

Exactly What Are 'Systemic' AI Risks, Anyway?

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As artificial intelligence keeps marching into the corporate world, compliance and risk management teams must start grappling with its many risks. That means compliance officers have an important question...

United StatesTechnology
Matt Kelly
Matt Kelly
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What is the difference between 'high' and 'systemic' AI risk?

As artificial intelligence keeps marching into the corporate world, compliance and risk management teams must start grappling with its many risks. That means compliance officers have an important question they need to answer right away.

Exactly what qualifies as one of those "systemic" or "high" risks from AI, which you're supposed to worry about the most?

For example, in the European Union's recently released Code of Practice for General-Purpose AI Models, the chapter on safety and security (one of three chapters) mentions "systemic risk" 295 times across 40 pages – including seven instances in the first paragraph alone. And that's not to be confused with Article 6 of the EU AI Act itself, which specifies a larger class of "high-risk AI systems" need special attention.

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