AI Governance Engineer
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Design defect

By Updated

In product liability, a defect inherent in the design of every unit, judged by consumer expectations or by weighing risk against utility 1. For AI: untested operating conditions, a missing guardrail or missing oversight where a safer alternative was reasonably available.

Developed in
ch. 20, Defect types mapped to AI failure modes
Chapters
ch. 20, Existing Law
Contrast with
Manufacturing defect
Source
1 numbered reference, listed below

Where it is used

One chapter of the Body of Knowledge uses the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

Design defect: mentions per chapter2 mentions of the term across 1 of the 23 chapters of the Body of Knowledge; the chapters the glossary cross-references are drawn solid.Cross-referenced chapter20 Existing Law: 2 mentions20 Existing Law2No mentions in the other 22 chaptersSource: the Body of Knowledgev0.5.0
Design defect: mentions per chapter2 mentions of the term across 1 of the 23 chapters of the Body of Knowledge; the chapters the glossary cross-references are drawn solid.Cross-referenced chapter0001020304050607081011121314151617181920 Existing Law: 2 mentions220212223Source: the Body of Knowledge v0.5.0
Mentions per chapter How often each chapter names the term, with the chapters the glossary cross-references drawn solid. The longest bar is where to read the term in use; bars spread across many chapters mark a term that runs through the discipline.
Mentions as a table
Mentions of Design defect per chapter
ChapterMentionsCross-referenced
00 Preface0No
01 Definition0No
02 Why Now0No
03 Values & Principles0No
04 The Stack0No
05 Patterns0No
06 The Role0No
07 Maturity Model0No
08 Regulatory Map0No
10 Reading List0No
11 AI Defined0No
12 Governance Program0No
13 Risk Management0No
14 Development0No
15 Deployment0No
16 Fairness & XAI0No
17 Incidents0No
18 EU AI Act0No
19 Privacy & AI0No
20 Existing Law2Yes
21 AI Laws Worldwide0No
22 Principles & Standards0No
23 AI Agents0No
  • Guardrail

    A runtime control that inspects or mediates a model's or agent's inputs, outputs or tool calls and blocks, rewrites or escalates what breaks a policy, logging…

Sources

  1. [1] "Products liability" (design, manufacturing and marketing defects, incl. failure to warn; consumer-expectation and risk-utility tests). Legal Information Institute, Wex. 2026. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/products_liability (verified: secondary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). Design defect. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/design-defect. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026designdefect,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Design defect}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/design-defect}
}