Risk Level

NIKOLAI proposes Risk Level as the overall graded risk assigned to a model, domain, or company activity as a whole -- distinct from a capability threshold or capability level, which describes what a model can do rather than the net risk after mitigations. This is a NIKOLAI editorial proposal made necessary by a genuine label collision in the corpus: several sources use identical words ('High', 'Critical') for capability levels in one place and risk levels in another.

This is CASRAI's own proposed definition, not a definition any named organisation has agreed to. See what NIKOLAI is and is not.

Source of record

Where this definition comes from

Anthropic Risk Report, August 2026, §2.19, §4.6.1
“"All four risk categories are assessed low"; alignment and CB-1 "raised from 'very low' to 'low'" (§2.19, §4.6.1).”
https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/f61d49fa5596956a5dec75fea0e973bf6a6a8378/Redacted%20Risk%20Report%20August%202026%20.pdf
Meta Advanced AI Scaling Framework v2, Table 1
“"Critical", "High", "Moderate or lower" risk thresholds with measures "Develop with Mitigations", "Deploy with mitigations", "Deploy" (Table 1).”
https://ai.meta.com/static-resource/Meta_Advanced-AI-Scaling-Framework-v2

Crosswalk

How named organisations use this concept

Every row below is a shadow mapping. It is CASRAI's own reading of a published document. No lab, evaluator or regulator named here has declared, endorsed, or been consulted on this mapping. That will change only when an organisation files its own Mapping Declaration — see the non-endorsement policy.

Organisation	Their term, as published	Match	Source
Anthropic Anthropic Risk Report, August 2026 / Anthropic Advanced AI Framework	“"All four risk categories are assessed low"; alignment and CB-1 "raised from 'very low' to 'low'" (§2.19, §4.6.1). AAF evaluator review addresses "the overall assessment of the level of risk for each Enumerated Risk category" (p.8).”	exact confidence: high	Anthropic Risk Report, August 2026
OpenAI OpenAI Frontier Governance Framework / Preparedness Framework v2	“FGF "Risk tiers" with Tier 1 to Tier 3 for cyber, CBRN and loss of control (§2.4). PF v2 retired "low" and "medium" "because those levels were not operationally involved in the execution of our Preparedness work" (App. A).”	close confidence: high	OpenAI Frontier Governance Framework
xAI xAI Frontier AI Framework, 30 Jun 2026	“"we review the risk tiers for each systemic risk category" (s.2.3). Not defined anywhere.” This row cites xAI's Frontier AI Framework (30 Jun 2026, {FAIF26}), whose PDF metadata /Title reads "Privileged/Confidential DRAFT working FRAMEWORK DOC" with no xAI statement found disambiguating draft vs. final status. Treat as citing a document of unconfirmed draft/final status.	none confidence: medium	xAI Frontier AI Framework, 30 Jun 2026
Meta Meta Advanced AI Scaling Framework v2	“"Critical", "High", "Moderate or lower" risk thresholds with measures "Develop with Mitigations", "Deploy with mitigations", "Deploy" (Table 1).”	exact confidence: high	Meta Advanced AI Scaling Framework v2
EU EU GPAI Code of Practice, Safety and Security Chapter	“Same tiers/estimates machinery as B4/C3 (systemic risk tiers, Measure 4.1; qualitative or quantitative estimate, Measure 3.4); the chapter gives illustrative labels only ("moderate", "critical") rather than a fixed scale.”	close confidence: high	EU GPAI Code of Practice, Safety and Security Chapter
Microsoft Microsoft Frontier Governance Framework, Feb 2026	“"low, medium, high, or critical risk to national security or public safety" (p.3).”	exact confidence: high	Microsoft Frontier Governance Framework, Feb 2026
NVIDIA NVIDIA Frontier AI Risk Assessment	“A numeric "model risk (MR) score between 1 and 5 based on the highest MR score within this criteria" (p.2) across three criteria -- intended use case, capabilities, level of autonomy -- each with "discrete thresholds between 1 and 5"; "correlated to the maximum permissible harm relative to our trustworthy AI principles" (p.2).”	exact confidence: high	NVIDIA Frontier AI Risk Assessment

Related, not mapped

Pointers that are not crosswalk claims

These sources mention this concept but do not define or map it clearly enough to count as a crosswalk row — noted here so the research is visible without overstating it as a mapping.

Frontier Model Forum
RL -- FMF's secondary description of Meta's own scale, not an independent risk-level vocabulary of FMF's; a pointer back to the META row above.
Frontier Model Forum: Risk Taxonomy and Thresholds

Divergence

Where sources materially disagree

False-friend warning carried from the source's own note directly under this element and from section 4's 'Critical'/'High' false-friend rows (not a table-coded FF row for risk-level itself, but flagged in the same section and preserved here per the no-caveats-dropped rule): OpenAI's 'High' and 'Critical' are capability thresholds, not risk levels, in OpenAI's own other vocabulary (see the capability-threshold element). Meta's and Microsoft's 'High'/'Critical' above ARE risk levels, and Anthropic's 'low' above is a risk level, not a capability level. A naive string match across these sources on the word 'Critical' or 'High' alone would silently conflate a capability threshold with a risk level; NIKOLAI's crosswalk keeps these element types distinct precisely to prevent that collision.