Severity
In the sizing of a failure mode, how bad the consequence is if the failure reaches a real person, judged in the organization's own terms. Severity is independent of frequency; a rare catastrophic failure can outrank a frequent trivial one.
Defined in 3 GAGE programs, which carry 3 distinct definitions of it. The wording above is taught in AI Governance: Applied Mastery.
How each discipline defines it
The same term does different work depending on who is using it. These are the definitions as each program teaches them, unedited.
In the risk matrix, an ordinal rating of how serious the consequences would be if an identified risk materialized, considering both regulatory consequence (penalty tiers, filing rejection, enforcement action) and practical consequence (reputational harm, user harm, platform-level compliance sweeps).
In the sizing of a failure mode, how bad the consequence is if the failure reaches a real person, judged in the organization's own terms. Severity is independent of frequency; a rare catastrophic failure can outrank a frequent trivial one.
In FMEA scoring, a measure of how serious the effect of a failure mode would be if it occurred, independent of how likely the failure mode is. Severity is a property of the consequence, not the probability.
Where it is taught
The exact lessons this term appears in. The first 7 topics of every program are free with a free account.
- The license to govern: explaining to a skeptic exactly how your model fails · Build Before You Govern, AI Governance: Applied Mastery
Terms it appears with
Not an alphabetical neighbourhood: these are the terms taught in the same lessons, ranked by how often they appear together.