Existing work on the alignment problem has focused mainly on (1) qualitative descriptions of the alignment problem; (2) attempting to align AI actions with human interests by focusing on value specification and learning; and/or (3) focusing on a single agent or on humanity as a monolith. Recent sociotechnical approaches highlight the need to understand complex misalignment among multiple human and AI agents. We address this gap by adapting a computational social science model of human contention to the alignment problem. Our model quantifies misalignment in large, diverse agent groups with potentially conflicting goals across various problem areas. Misalignment scores in our framework depend on the observed agent population, the domain in question, and conflict between agents' weighted preferences. Through simulations, we demonstrate how our model captures intuitive aspects of misalignment across different scenarios. We then apply our model to two case studies, including an autonomous vehicle setting, showcasing its practical utility. Our approach offers enhanced explanatory power for complex sociotechnical environments and could inform the design of more aligned AI systems in real-world applications.

In August of 2024, 495 hackers generated evaluations in an open-ended bug bounty targeting the Open Language Model (OLMo) from The Allen Institute for AI. A vendor panel staffed by representatives of OLMo's safety program adjudicated changes to OLMo's documentation and awarded cash bounties to participants who successfully demonstrated a need for public disclosure clarifying the intent, capacities, and hazards of model deployment. This paper presents a collection of lessons learned, illustrative of flaw reporting best practices intended to reduce the likelihood of incidents and produce safer large language models (LLMs). These include best practices for safety reporting processes, their artifacts, and safety program staffing.

Margaret Mitchell, Giuseppe Attanasio, Ioana Baldini, Miruna Clinciu, Jordan Clive, Pieter Delobelle, Manan Dey, Sil Hamilton, Timm Dill, Jad Doughman, Ritam Dutt, Avijit Ghosh, Jessica Zosa Forde, Carolin Holtermann, Lucie-Aimée Kaffee, Tanmay Laud, Anne Lauscher, Roberto L Lopez-Davila, Maraim Masoud, Nikita Nangia, Anaelia Ovalle, Giada Pistilli, Dragomir Radev, Beatrice Savoldi, Vipul Raheja, Jeremy Qin, Esther Ploeger, Arjun Subramonian, Kaustubh Dhole, Kaiser Sun, Amirbek Djanibekov, Jonibek Mansurov, Kayo Yin, Emilio Villa Cueva, Sagnik Mukherjee, Jerry Huang, Xudong Shen, Jay Gala, Hamdan Al-Ali, Tair Djanibekov, Nurdaulet Mukhituly, Shangrui Nie, Shanya Sharma, Karolina Stanczak, Eliza Szczechla, Tiago Timponi Torrent, Deepak Tunuguntla, Marcelo Viridiano, Oskar Van Der Wal, Adina Yakefu, Aurélie Névéol, Mike Zhang, Sydney Zink, Zeerak Talat. Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Volume 1: Long Papers). 2025.

Harm reporting in Artificial Intelligence (AI) currently lacks a structured process for disclosing and addressing algorithmic flaws, relying largely on an ad-hoc approach. This contrasts sharply with the well-established Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD) ecosystem in software security. While global efforts to establish frameworks for AI transparency and collaboration are underway, the unique challenges presented by machine learning (ML) models demand a specialized approach. To address this gap, we propose implementing a Coordinated Flaw Disclosure (CFD) framework tailored to the complexities of ML and AI issues. This paper reviews the evolution of ML disclosure practices, from ad hoc reporting to emerging participatory auditing methods, and compares them with cybersecurity norms. Our framework introduces innovations such as extended model cards, dynamic scope expansion, an independent adjudication panel, and an automated verification process. We also outline a forthcoming real-world pilot of CFD. We argue that CFD could significantly enhance public trust in AI systems. By balancing organizational and community interests, CFD aims to improve AI accountability in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

The results returned by image search engines have the power to shape peoples' perceptions about social groups. Existing work on image search engines leverages hand-selected queries for occupations like "doctor" and "engineer" to quantify racial and gender bias in search results. We complement this work by analyzing peoples' real-world image search queries and measuring the distributions of perceived gender, skin tone, and age in their results. We collect 54,070 unique image search queries and analyze 1,481 open-ended people queries (i.e. not queries for named entities) from a representative sample of 643 US residents. For each query, we analyze the top 15 results returned on both Google and Bing Images.

Bias evaluation benchmarks and dataset and model documentation have emerged as central processes for assessing the biases and harms of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. However, these auditing processes have been criticized for their failure to integrate the knowledge of marginalized communities and consider the power dynamics between auditors and the communities. Consequently, modes of bias evaluation have been proposed that engage impacted communities in identifying and assessing the harms of AI systems (e.g., bias bounties). Even so, asking what marginalized communities want from such auditing processes has been neglected. In this paper, we ask queer communities for their positions on, and desires from, auditing processes. To this end, we organized a participatory workshop to critique and redesign bias bounties from queer perspectives. We found that when given space, the scope of feedback from workshop participants goes far beyond what bias bounties afford, with participants questioning the ownership, incentives, and efficacy of bounties. We conclude by advocating for community ownership of bounties and complementing bounties with participatory processes (e.g., co-creation).

The operationalization of algorithmic fairness comes with several practical challenges, not the least of which is the availability or reliability of protected attributes in datasets. In real-world contexts, practical and legal impediments may prevent the collection and use of demographic data, making it difficult to ensure algorithmic fairness. While initial fairness algorithms did not consider these limitations, recent proposals aim to achieve algorithmic fairness in classification by incorporating noisiness in protected attributes or not using protected attributes at all.

Systems that offer continuous model monitoring have emerged in response to (1) well-documented failures of deployed Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) models and (2) new regulatory requirements impacting these models. Existing monitoring systems continuously track the performance of deployed ML models and compute feature importance (a.k.a. explanations) for each prediction to help developers identify the root causes of emergent model performance problems.

Researchers and journalists have repeatedly shown that algorithms commonly used in domains such as credit, employment, healthcare, or criminal justice can have discriminatory effects. Some organizations have tried to mitigate these effects by simply removing sensitive features from an algorithm's inputs. In this paper, we explore the limits of this approach using a unique opportunity. In 2019, Facebook agreed to settle a lawsuit by removing certain sensitive features from inputs of an algorithm that identifies users similar to those provided by an advertiser for ad targeting, making both the modified and unmodified versions of the algorithm available to advertisers. We develop methodologies to measure biases along the lines of gender, age, and race in the audiences created by this modified algorithm, relative to the unmodified one. Our results provide experimental proof that merely removing demographic features from a real-world algorithmic system's inputs can fail to prevent biased outputs. As a result, organizations using algorithms to help mediate access to important life opportunities should consider other approaches to mitigating discriminatory effects.

Existing fair ranking systems, especially those designed to be demographically fair, assume that accurate demographic information about individuals is available to the ranking algorithm. In practice, however, this assumption may not hold --- in real-world contexts like ranking job applicants or credit seekers, social and legal barriers may prevent algorithm operators from collecting peoples' demographic information. In these cases, algorithm operators may attempt to infer peoples' demographics and then supply these inferences as inputs to the ranking algorithm.