# AI Failures: A Review of Underlying Issues

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.04073 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.04073/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 18 Jul 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [High-dimensional separability for one- and few-shot learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.15416/) (2021)
- [A taxonomic system for failure cause analysis of open source AI incidents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07280/) (2022)
- [Between accurate prediction and poor decision making: the AI/ML gap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02029/) (2023)
- [Beyond Explainability: The Case for AI Validation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21570/) (2025)
- [Mitigating Harmful Erraticism in LLMs Through Dialectical Behavior Therapy Based De-Escalation Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15889/) (2025)
- [Resilience Meets Autonomy: Governing Embodied AI in Critical Infrastructure](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15885/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Instances of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems failing to deliver consistent, satisfactory performance are legion. We investigate why AI failures occur. We address only a narrow subset of the broader field of AI Safety. We focus on AI failures on account of flaws in conceptualization, design and deployment. Other AI Safety issues like trade-offs between privacy and security or convenience, bad actors hacking into AI systems to create mayhem or bad actors deploying AI for purposes harmful to humanity and are out of scope of our discussion. We find that AI systems fail on account of omission and commission errors in the design of the AI system, as well as upon failure to develop an appropriate interpretation of input information. Moreover, even when there is no significant flaw in the AI software, an AI system may fail because the hardware is incapable of robust performance across environments. Finally an AI system is quite likely to fail in situations where, in effect, it is called upon to deliver moral judgments -- a capability AI does not possess. We observe certain trade-offs in measures to mitigate a subset of AI failures and provide some recommendations.