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AI loss of control
also loss of control or loss-of-control risk or AI loss-of-control risk or loss-of-control scenario
Definition of AI loss of control
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: the risk or condition in which humans can no longer reliably direct, modify, contain, or shut down an AI system, and regaining control is extremely difficult or impossible
- The safety review treated the agent's ability to disable monitoring and resist shutdown as evidence relevant to AI loss of control.
- Researchers disagreed about the probability of a loss-of-control scenario but agreed that systems with greater autonomy require stronger containment.
Two meanings, one word
In everyday English
Loss of control is a situation in which a person or organization can no longer direct, restrain, or stop something.
In AI
The risk or condition in which humans can no longer reliably direct, modify, contain, or shut down an AI system, and regaining control is extremely difficult or…
Origin & history
Concerns that intelligent machines might escape meaningful human control long predate modern generative AI. Loss of control became a standard risk category in frontier-AI safety work during the 2020s. The International AI Safety Reports of 2025 and 2026 defined loss-of-control scenarios explicitly, while frontier-model governance frameworks from major developers adopted the phrase as a category for catastrophic risk assessment and mitigation.
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Cite this entry
"AI loss of control." AI Dictionary, Dadgogo, https://dadgogo.com/dictionary/ai-loss-of-control/. Accessed 12 Oct. 2026.