We investigate the problem of maximizing social welfare while ensuring fairness in a multi-agent multi-armed bandit (MA-MAB) setting. In this problem, a centralized decision-maker takes actions over time, generating random rewards for various agents. Our goal is to maximize the sum of expected cumulative rewards, a.k.a. social welfare, while ensuring that each agent receives an expected reward that is at least a constant fraction of the maximum possible expected reward. Our proposed algorithm, RewardFairUCB, leverages the Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) technique to achieve sublinear regret bounds for both fairness and social welfare. The fairness regret measures the positive difference between the minimum reward guarantee and the expected reward of a given policy, whereas the social welfare regret measures the difference between the social welfare of the optimal fair policy and that of the given policy. We show that RewardFairUCB algorithm achieves instance-independent social welfare regret guarantees of $\tilde{O}(T^{1/2})$ and a fairness regret upper bound of $\tilde{O}(T^{3/4})$. We also give the lower bound of $\Omega(\sqrt{T})$ for both social welfare and fairness regret. We evaluate RewardFairUCB's performance against various baseline and heuristic algorithms using simulated data and real world data, highlighting trade-offs between fairness and social welfare regrets.

Trajectory prediction allows better decision-making in applications of autonomous vehicles or surveillance by predicting the short-term future movement of traffic agents. It is classified into pedestrian or heterogeneous trajectory prediction. The former exploits the relatively consistent behavior of pedestrians, but is limited in real-world scenarios with heterogeneous traffic agents such as cyclists and vehicles. The latter typically relies on extra class label information to distinguish the heterogeneous agents, but such labels are costly to annotate and cannot be generalized to represent different behaviors within the same class of agents. In this work, we introduce the behavioral pseudo-labels that effectively capture the behavior distributions of pedestrians and heterogeneous agents solely based on their motion features, significantly improving the accuracy of trajectory prediction. To implement the framework, we propose the Behavioral Pseudo-Label Informed Sparse Graph Convolution Network (BP-SGCN) that learns pseudo-labels and informs to a trajectory predictor. For optimization, we propose a cascaded training scheme, in which we first learn the pseudo-labels in an unsupervised manner, and then perform end-to-end fine-tuning on the labels in the direction of increasing the trajectory prediction accuracy. Experiments show that our pseudo-labels effectively model different behavior clusters and improve trajectory prediction. Our proposed BP-SGCN outperforms existing methods using both pedestrian (ETH/UCY, pedestrian-only SDD) and heterogeneous agent datasets (SDD, Argoverse 1).

--Cooperative intelligence (CI) is expected to become an integral element in next-generation networks because it can aggregate the capabilities and intelligence of multiple devices. Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) is a popular approach for achieving CI in communication problems by enabling effective collaboration among agents to address sequential problems. However, ensuring privacy protection for MARL is a challenging task because of the presence of heterogeneous agents that learn interdependently via sharing information. Implementing privacy protection techniques such as data encryption and federated learning to MARL introduces the notable overheads (e.g., computation and bandwidth). T o overcome these challenges, we propose PP-MARL, an efficient privacy-preserving learning scheme for MARL. PP-MARL leverages homomorphic encryption (HE) and differential privacy (DP) to protect privacy, while introducing split learning to decrease overheads via reducing the volume of shared messages, and then improve efficiency. We apply and evaluate PP-MARL in two communication-related use cases. Simulation results reveal that PP-MARL can achieve efficient and reliable collaboration with 1.1-6 times better privacy protection and lower overheads (e.g., 84-91% reduction in bandwidth) than state-of-the-art approaches. Cooperative intelligence (CI) [1], [2] is expected to facilitate next-generation networks by establishing collaboration among various communication-related intelligent equipment. Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) is a popular approach for achieving CI in addressing sequential problems in communication [3], such as adaptive routing and resource allocation [4].

As artificial intelligence scales, the concepts of alignment, agency, and autonomy have become central to AI safety, governance, and control. However, even in human contexts, these terms lack universal definitions, varying across disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, law, computer science, mathematics, and political science. This inconsistency complicates their application to AI, where differing interpretations lead to conflicting approaches in system design and regulation. This paper traces the historical, philosophical, and technical evolution of these concepts, emphasizing how their definitions influence AI development, deployment, and oversight. We argue that the urgency surrounding AI alignment and autonomy stems not only from technical advancements but also from the increasing deployment of AI in high-stakes decision making. Using Agentic AI as a case study, we examine the emergent properties of machine agency and autonomy, highlighting the risks of misalignment in real-world systems. Through an analysis of automation failures (Tesla Autopilot, Boeing 737 MAX), multi-agent coordination (Metas CICERO), and evolving AI architectures (DeepMinds AlphaZero, OpenAIs AutoGPT), we assess the governance and safety challenges posed by frontier AI.

AI agents are AI systems that can achieve complex goals autonomously. Assessing the level of agent autonomy is crucial for understanding both their potential benefits and risks. Current assessments of autonomy often focus on specific risks and rely on run-time evaluations - observations of agent actions during operation. We introduce a code-based assessment of autonomy that eliminates the need to run an AI agent to perform specific tasks, thereby reducing the costs and risks associated with run-time evaluations. Using this code-based framework, the orchestration code used to run an AI agent can be scored according to a taxonomy that assesses attributes of autonomy: impact and oversight. We demonstrate this approach with the AutoGen framework and select applications. Language model research and product attention focuses on creating Artificial Intelligence systems capable of flexibly planning and acting to influence environments over time ('AI agents') (Wang et al., 2024; Kapoor et al., 2024).

Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have upgraded them from sophisticated text generators to autonomous agents capable of corporation and tool use in multi-agent systems (MASs). However, the robustness of these LLM-based MASs, especially under knowledge conflicts, remains unclear. In this paper, we design four comprehensive metrics to investigate the robustness of MASs when facing mild or task-critical knowledge conflicts. We first analyze mild knowledge conflicts introduced by heterogeneous agents and find that they do not harm system robustness but instead improve collaborative decision-making. Next, we investigate task-critical knowledge conflicts by synthesizing knowledge conflicts and embedding them into one of the agents. Our results show that these conflicts have surprisingly little to no impact on MAS robustness. Furthermore, we observe that MASs demonstrate certain self-repairing capabilities by reducing their reliance on knowledge conflicts and adopting alternative solution paths to maintain stability. Finally, we conduct ablation studies on the knowledge conflict number, agent number, and interaction rounds, finding that the self-repairing capability of MASs has intrinsic limits, and all findings hold consistently across various factors. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/wbw625/MultiAgentRobustness.

Problems of consensus in multi-agent systems are often viewed as a series of independent, simultaneous local decisions made between a limited set of options, all aimed at reaching a global agreement. Key challenges in these protocols include estimating the likelihood of various outcomes and finding bounds for how long it may take to achieve consensus, if it occurs at all. To date, little attention has been given to the case where some agents have no initial opinion. In this paper, we introduce a variant of the consensus problem which includes what we call `agnostic' nodes and frame it as a combination of two known and well-studied processes: voter model and rumour spreading. We show (1) a martingale that describes the probability of consensus for a given colour, (2) bounds on the number of steps for the process to end using results from rumour spreading and voter models, (3) closed formulas for the probability of consensus in a few special cases, and (4) that the computational complexity of estimating the probability with a Markov chain Monte Carlo process is $O(n^2 \log n)$ for general graphs and $O(n\log n)$ for Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi graphs, which makes it an efficient method for estimating probabilities of consensus. Furthermore, we present experimental results suggesting that the number of runs needed for a given standard error decreases when the number of nodes increases.

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly expanded the attack surface for AI-driven cybersecurity threats, necessitating adaptive defense strategies. This paper introduces CyberSentinel, a unified, single-agent system for emergent threat detection, designed to identify and mitigate novel security risks in real time. CyberSentinel integrates: (1) Brute-force attack detection through SSH log analysis, (2) Phishing threat assessment using domain blacklists and heuristic URL scoring, and (3) Emergent threat detection via machine learning-based anomaly detection. By continuously adapting to evolving adversarial tactics, CyberSentinel strengthens proactive cybersecurity defense, addressing critical vulnerabilities in AI security.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown great promise in tool-making, yet existing frameworks often struggle to efficiently construct reliable toolsets and are limited to single-task settings. To address these challenges, we propose GATE (Graph-based Adaptive Tool Evolution), an adaptive framework that dynamically constructs and evolves a hierarchical graph of reusable tools across multiple scenarios. We evaluate GATE on open-ended tasks (Minecraft), agent-based tasks (TextCraft, DABench), and code generation tasks (MATH, Date, TabMWP). Our results show that GATE achieves up to 4.3x faster milestone completion in Minecraft compared to the previous SOTA, and provides an average improvement of 9.23% over existing tool-making methods in code generation tasks and 10.03% in agent tasks. GATE demonstrates the power of adaptive evolution, balancing tool quantity, complexity, and functionality while maintaining high efficiency. Code and data are available at \url{https://github.com/ayanami2003/GATE}.

NASA's Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration (CADRE) mission, slated for flight to the Moon's Reiner Gamma region in 2025/2026, is designed to demonstrate multi-agent autonomous exploration of the Lunar surface and sub-surface. A team of three robots and a base station will autonomously explore a region near the lander, collecting the data required for 3D reconstruction of the surface with no human input; and then autonomously perform distributed sensing with multi-static ground penetrating radars (GPR), driving in formation while performing coordinated radar soundings to create a map of the subsurface. At the core of CADRE's software architecture is a novel autonomous, distributed planning, scheduling, and execution (PS&E) system. The system coordinates the robots' activities, planning and executing tasks that require multiple robots' participation while ensuring that each individual robot's thermal and power resources stay within prescribed bounds, and respecting ground-prescribed sleep-wake cycles. The system uses a centralized-planning, distributed-execution paradigm, and a leader election mechanism ensures robustness to failures of individual agents. In this paper, we describe the architecture of CADRE's PS&E system; discuss its design rationale; and report on verification and validation (V&V) testing of the system on CADRE's hardware in preparation for deployment on the Moon.