Pandora’s Box Opened: A Global Analysis of ChatGPT’s Impact on AI Incidents
This is a joint seminar organized by HKU Business School’s IIM Area and Institute of Digital Economy & Innovation (IDEI).
Professor Huigang Liang
Professor | PhD Coordinator | FedEx Chair of Excellence in MIS
Department of Management Information Systems (MIS)
Fogelman College | The University of Memphis
While the rapid advancement and widespread adoption of generative AI technologies have yielded unprecedented benefits, like many transformative technologies throughout human history, the benefits of generative AI are accompanied by significant risks that demand careful consideration and proactive management. Since the release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, we have entered the generative AI (GAI) era, during which AI-related incidents have been skyrocketing. Issues such as security breach, deepfake fraud, and privacy violation highlight how GAI can compromise data integrity, authenticity, and confidentiality. These emerging threats have garnered tremendous global attention. However, there is no empirical evidence to demonstrate if ChatGPT has contributed to the rise in AI incidents, nor is there clarity on effective strategies for risk mitigation. This concern is especially urgent at the national level, since countries vary in AI development and may experience AI risks differently, and effective AI risk mitigation requires international cooperation. Against this backdrop, this research aims to address three fundamental questions: (1) Has the advent of generative AI, specifically ChatGPT, led to a significant increase in AI incidents globally? (2) To what extent have national AI investments influenced the relationship between ChatGPT access and AI incidents? (3) What role does institutional quality play in mitigating AI-related risks, and what policy implications can be derived for effective governance? To empirically test our hypotheses, we compiled a unique country-level panel dataset from multiple sources, encompassing 10,332 observations from 126 countries worldwide and spanning 82 months, from January 2018 to October 2024. We employ a Difference-in-Differences (DID) strategy to estimate the treatment effect of ChatGPT access on AI incidents. The findings indicate that after the ChatGPT release, countries with ChatGPT access experienced significantly more AI incidents than those without access. Moreover, both AI investment and institutional quality weaken the treatment effect of ChatGPT access on AI incidents. These findings remain consistent after we run a series of robustness tests. This research contributes to research by establishing the causal link between GAI and AI Incidents while identifying boundary conditions of this effect at the national level. It also contributes to practice by providing actionable insights for policy and governance regarding AI development from a global perspective.
Huigang Liang is Professor and FedEx Chair of Excellence in Information Systems at Fogelman College of Business and Economics, University of Memphis. Huigang Liang’s research lies at the nexus of information technology and human behavior, examining socio‑behavioral, managerial, and strategic IT issues at both individual and organizational levels across diverse contexts. His scholarship has appeared in leading outlets such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of MIS, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, MIT Sloan Management Review, Communications of the ACM, Decision Support Systems, Information Systems Journal, and Journal of Strategic Information Systems, among others. He draws on a range of methods—including econometric modeling, field experiments, and advanced analytics—to address various research questions. Dr. Liang’s research has attracted competitive funding from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, FedEx, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, supporting projects in health informatics, IT security, and artificial intelligence. His current agenda investigates how emerging AI technologies can enhance productivity and safeguard sensitive data. By grounding his inquiries in real‑world challenges, he leverages strong theoretical frameworks, rigorous empirical data, and sophisticated analytical techniques to deliver actionable insights. A globally recognized scholar, Dr. Liang is one of the top ranked scholars based on the AIS Research Ranking System and has accrued over 20,000 citations according to Google Scholar. Committed to serving the academic community, Dr. Liang has served as Associate Editor for MIS Quarterly and Information & Management, and he currently holds the positions of Senior Editor for the Journal of the Association for Information Systems and Associate Editor for Information Systems Research. Passionate about bridging theory and practice, Dr. Liang continues to pursue interdisciplinary collaborations to explore how IT can support better decision‑making, improve performance, and foster well‑being.
