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Responsible Tech MaxxingIntermediateRisk Management60 sec
Severity
Severity is how serious the consequences would be if a specific risk actually occurred, the second core factor used alongside likelihood to evaluate a risk.
Prerequisite: Likelihood
What matters
A risk with catastrophic severity can deserve serious mitigation effort even at low likelihood, which is why severity can't be ignored just because an event seems unlikely.
Example
A model error that could cause a wrongful arrest has high severity, warranting careful mitigation even if such an error is expected to be rare.
Common misconception
High severity does not automatically mean a risk should block deployment entirely; likelihood and available mitigations still factor into the overall decision.
Recall question
Why might a low-likelihood risk still deserve serious mitigation effort?
Keywords and related concepts
severityconsequencesrisk assessmentlikelihood