Never Compromise to Vulnerabilities: A Comprehensive Survey on AI Governance

TL;DR

This survey reviews over 300 studies on AI vulnerabilities and proposes an integrated governance framework combining technical robustness, societal ethics, and policy to enhance AI trustworthiness.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive AI governance framework unifying technical methods, evaluation benchmarks, and policy insights to address vulnerabilities and societal risks.

Findings

Identifies core challenges like the generalization gap and fragmented regulations.

Highlights shortcomings of reactive governance approaches.

Provides an integrated research agenda for robust, ethical AI development.

Abstract

The rapid advancement of AI has expanded its capabilities across domains, yet introduced critical technical vulnerabilities, such as algorithmic bias and adversarial sensitivity, that pose significant societal risks, including misinformation, inequity, security breaches, physical harm, and eroded public trust. These challenges highlight the urgent need for robust AI governance. We propose a comprehensive framework integrating technical and societal dimensions, structured around three interconnected pillars: Intrinsic Security (system reliability), Derivative Security (real-world harm mitigation), and Social Ethics (value alignment and accountability). Uniquely, our approach unifies technical methods, emerging evaluation benchmarks, and policy insights to promote transparency, accountability, and trust in AI systems. Through a systematic review of over 300 studies, we identify three core challenges: (1) the generalization gap, where defenses fail against evolving threats; (2) inadequate evaluation protocols that overlook real-world risks; and (3) fragmented regulations leading to inconsistent oversight. These shortcomings stem from treating governance as an afterthought, rather than a foundational design principle, resulting in reactive, siloed efforts that fail to address the interdependence of technical integrity and societal trust. To overcome this, we present an integrated research agenda that bridges technical rigor with social responsibility. Our framework offers actionable guidance for researchers, engineers, and policymakers to develop AI systems that are not only robust and secure but also ethically aligned and publicly trustworthy. The accompanying repository is available at https://github.com/ZTianle/Awesome-AI-SG.