LLM Harms: A Taxonomy and Discussion

Abhejay Murali; Amit Dhurandhar; David Atkinson; Junfeng Jiao; Kevin Chen; Saleh Afroogh

arxiv: 2512.05929 · v4 · pith:LSIQ2D3Nnew · submitted 2025-12-05 · 💻 cs.CY

LLM Harms: A Taxonomy and Discussion

Kevin Chen , Saleh Afroogh , Abhejay Murali , David Atkinson , Amit Dhurandhar , Junfeng Jiao This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-17 00:23 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.CY

keywords LLM harmstaxonomymitigation strategiesdynamic auditingresponsible AIbias navigationaccountabilitytransparency

0 comments

The pith

A taxonomy of LLM harms across five lifecycle stages supports mitigation strategies and a dynamic auditing system for responsible development.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper tries to establish a clear structure for identifying and addressing the risks that arise from large language models by dividing them into categories that occur before development begins, in their direct outputs, through misuse for harmful ends, and in their later real-world applications. It underscores that defining these risks upfront is necessary to achieve accountability, transparency, and better handling of bias when LLMs are put to practical use. A sympathetic reader would care because this organization makes it easier to spot problems early and to follow consistent steps that reduce unintended negative effects across different domains. The work also outlines specific mitigation approaches and future directions to guide safer integration of these models.

Core claim

The paper establishes five categories of harms addressed before, during, and after development of AI applications: pre-development, direct output, misuse and malicious application, and downstream application. By defining the risks in the current landscape, the taxonomy supports accountability, transparency, and navigation of bias when adapting LLMs for practical applications, and it proposes mitigation strategies and future directions for specific domains along with a dynamic auditing system to guide responsible development and integration in a standardized way.

What carries the argument

The taxonomy that classifies harms into pre-development, direct output, misuse and malicious application, and downstream application stages, which organizes the risks and enables the proposed mitigation and auditing steps.

Load-bearing premise

The listed categories comprehensively capture all relevant LLM harms without leaving out major types of damage or negative effects.

What would settle it

Discovery of a clear example of LLM-related harm that fits none of the categories pre-development, direct output, misuse and malicious application, or downstream application would show the taxonomy is incomplete.

read the original abstract

This study addresses categories of harm surrounding Large Language Models (LLMs) in the field of artificial intelligence. It addresses five categories of harms addressed before, during, and after development of AI applications: pre-development, direct output, Misuse and Malicious Application, and downstream application. By underscoring the need to define risks of the current landscape to ensure accountability, transparency and navigating bias when adapting LLMs for practical applications. It proposes mitigation strategies and future directions for specific domains and a dynamic auditing system guiding responsible development and integration of LLMs in a standardized proposal.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Desk Editor's Note private letter to a colleague

A basic stage-based taxonomy of LLM harms with mitigation suggestions, but no clear method for building or validating the categories.

read the letter

The paper's core move is to split LLM harms into stages—pre-development, direct output, misuse and malicious application, and downstream application—then sketch mitigation strategies and push for a dynamic auditing system to support responsible use. It flags the need for accountability, transparency, and bias handling when putting LLMs into practice. That stage-based framing is a reasonable way to organize thinking about when and where risks show up, and the auditing idea points in a useful direction for standardization. The authors give credit to the broader ethics literature without overclaiming novelty. The main weakness is that the taxonomy arrives without explanation of how it was assembled or checked. The abstract talks about five categories but only names four, and there is no account of literature mapping, incident review, or expert input to confirm completeness. Overlaps between misuse and downstream uses go unaddressed, and harms like training-data extraction, multi-turn deception, or infrastructure-level environmental costs do not obviously fit. Without examples, counterexamples, or even a simple cross-check against prior taxonomies, the claim that this supports a standardized auditing system rests on assertion rather than evidence. This is the kind of paper that could help AI ethics or policy readers who need a quick map for discussion or teaching. It will not deliver new measurements, derivations, or falsifiable claims. I would send it to peer review so referees can ask for a methods section and some grounding cases; the topic matters enough to justify the time even if the current version needs tightening.

Referee Report

3 major / 3 minor

Summary. The paper proposes a taxonomy of LLM harms organized into five categories spanning pre-development, direct output, misuse and malicious application, and downstream application. It highlights the need to define these risks to promote accountability, transparency, and bias mitigation in LLM applications, and puts forward mitigation strategies for specific domains along with a dynamic auditing system to support responsible development and integration.

Significance. If the taxonomy is shown to be comprehensive and the auditing proposal is operationalized with clear criteria, the work could provide a useful organizing framework for discussions on LLM governance in the Computers and Society community. As a purely conceptual piece without empirical validation, incident analysis, or comparison to prior taxonomies, its contribution remains primarily discursive rather than prescriptive.

major comments (3)

Abstract: The manuscript asserts five categories of harms but explicitly enumerates only four (pre-development, direct output, Misuse and Malicious Application, and downstream application). This internal inconsistency must be resolved by identifying the fifth category and explaining its distinct scope.
Abstract and main text: No section or subsection describes the method used to construct the taxonomy (e.g., systematic literature mapping, incident database review, or expert elicitation). Because the central claim—that a standardized dynamic auditing system can guide responsible LLM integration—rests on the taxonomy comprehensively partitioning harms without major overlaps or omissions, the absence of a construction rationale is load-bearing.
Abstract: The proposal for mitigation strategies and future directions is stated at a high level without concrete illustrations, domain-specific examples, or discussion of how the dynamic auditing system would handle boundary cases such as training-data extraction or emergent multi-turn behaviors.

minor comments (3)

Abstract: The sentence 'It addresses five categories of harms addressed before, during, and after development' contains redundant wording that should be revised for clarity.
Abstract: Category names show inconsistent capitalization ('Misuse and Malicious Application' versus the others); standardize formatting throughout.
Abstract: The manuscript would benefit from explicit references to existing AI ethics taxonomies (e.g., those from NIST, EU AI Act documentation, or prior LLM-specific surveys) to situate the proposed framework.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

3 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for their constructive and detailed comments. We address each major comment point by point below, indicating where revisions will be made to strengthen the manuscript.

read point-by-point responses

Referee: Abstract: The manuscript asserts five categories of harms but explicitly enumerates only four (pre-development, direct output, Misuse and Malicious Application, and downstream application). This internal inconsistency must be resolved by identifying the fifth category and explaining its distinct scope.

Authors: We thank the referee for identifying this inconsistency. The abstract references harms 'before, during, and after development,' which corresponds to five categories: pre-development, during development, direct output, Misuse and Malicious Application, and downstream application. The during-development category (encompassing issues in training, fine-tuning, and data curation) was omitted from the enumerated list. We will revise the abstract to explicitly list and briefly scope all five categories. revision: yes
Referee: Abstract and main text: No section or subsection describes the method used to construct the taxonomy (e.g., systematic literature mapping, incident database review, or expert elicitation). Because the central claim—that a standardized dynamic auditing system can guide responsible LLM integration—rests on the taxonomy comprehensively partitioning harms without major overlaps or omissions, the absence of a construction rationale is load-bearing.

Authors: We acknowledge that the manuscript lacks an explicit description of the taxonomy construction process. The taxonomy was developed via synthesis of prior AI ethics literature, reported incidents, and governance discussions. We will add a dedicated subsection (likely in the introduction) outlining this rationale and the criteria used to ensure the five categories partition harms comprehensively with minimal overlaps. revision: yes
Referee: Abstract: The proposal for mitigation strategies and future directions is stated at a high level without concrete illustrations, domain-specific examples, or discussion of how the dynamic auditing system would handle boundary cases such as training-data extraction or emergent multi-turn behaviors.

Authors: We agree the mitigation strategies and dynamic auditing proposal are high-level. In revision we will add concrete domain-specific examples (e.g., healthcare and education) and a discussion of boundary cases, including how the auditing system would address training-data extraction and emergent multi-turn behaviors, to increase operational clarity. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No circularity: taxonomy asserted from domain knowledge without self-referential reduction.

full rationale

The paper presents a taxonomy of LLM harms organized around development stages (pre-development, direct output, misuse/malicious application, downstream application) and proposes mitigation strategies plus a dynamic auditing system. No equations, fitted parameters, or derivations appear in the provided abstract or description. Claims rest on general domain knowledge of AI application lifecycles rather than any self-definition, self-citation chain, or renaming of prior results. The central proposal does not reduce to its inputs by construction; the categories are stated as a partitioning without a quoted mechanism that would make completeness tautological. This is a standard non-circular discussion paper.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

The central proposal rests on domain assumptions about the existence and categorizability of LLM harms across development stages, without independent empirical support or falsifiable tests in the abstract.

axioms (1)

domain assumption LLMs can produce harms at distinct stages of development and application that can be usefully grouped into categories for mitigation.
Invoked in the abstract when defining the five categories and proposing mitigations.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5394 in / 1128 out tokens · 80852 ms · 2026-05-17T00:23:54.873145+00:00 · methodology

discussion (0)

Lean theorems connected to this paper

Citations machine-checked in the Pith Canon. Every link opens the source theorem in the public Lean library.

IndisputableMonolith/Foundation/RealityFromDistinction.lean reality_from_one_distinction unclear

?

unclear
Relation between the paper passage and the cited Recognition theorem.

This study addresses five categories of harms... pre-development, direct output, Misuse and Malicious Application, and downstream application... dynamic auditing system
IndisputableMonolith/Cost/FunctionalEquation.lean washburn_uniqueness_aczel unclear

?

unclear
Relation between the paper passage and the cited Recognition theorem.

Section IV presents the taxonomy... 4.1 Pre-Deployment Harms... 4.2 Direct Output Harms...

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supports: The theorem supports part of the paper's argument, but the paper may add assumptions or extra steps.
extends: The paper goes beyond the formal theorem; the theorem is a base layer rather than the whole result.
uses: The paper appears to rely on the theorem as machinery.
contradicts: The paper's claim conflicts with a theorem or certificate in the canon.
unclear: Pith found a possible connection, but the passage is too broad, indirect, or ambiguous to say the theorem truly supports the claim.

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