AI Red-Teaming is a Sociotechnical System. Now What?

Whether tapped directly on the web, or embedded in software suites, search engines, and social media platforms, LLMs are everywhere. When a technology jumps this quickly from theoretical plaything to consumer service, many other elements are also settling in around it, without much forethought: interfaces, policies, business models, labor arrangements, infrastructural assurances, complementary technologies, public claims, advertising campaigns, regulations. Researchers studying the workings and implications of these technologies, across computer science, engineering, the social sciences, humanities, and law, must gear up just as fast to study not just the core technology, but the sociotechnical system taking shape around it[19]. Many of these decisions, arrangements, and infrastructures may turn out to be as consequential for users and the broader public as the core technology itself. But the boisterous promises and debates that surround a new technology can obscure these other essential elements that make technologies always more than the sum of their engineered parts. In this essay, we hope to call upon computer scientists and social scientists alike to pay closer, critical attention to thephenomenonof"red-teaming."