The issue of distribution shifts is emerging as a critical concern in graph representation learning.

Recent advances in AI research make it increasingly plausible that artificial agents with consequential real-world impact will soon operate beyond tightly controlled environments. Ensuring that these agents are not only safe but that they adhere to broader normative expectations is thus an urgent interdisciplinary challenge. Multiple fields -- notably AI Safety, AI Alignment, and Machine Ethics -- claim to contribute to this task. However, the conceptual boundaries and interrelations among these domains remain vague, leaving researchers without clear guidance in positioning their work. To address this meta-challenge, we develop a structured conceptual framework for understanding AI alignment. Rather than focusing solely on alignment goals, we introduce a taxonomy distinguishing the alignment aim (safety, ethicality, legality, etc.), scope (outcome vs. execution), and constituency (individual vs. collective). This structural approach reveals multiple legitimate alignment configurations, providing a foundation for practical and philosophical integration across domains, and clarifying what it might mean for an agent to be aligned all-things-considered.

The shape of AI regulation is beginning to emerge, most prominently through the EU AI Act (the "AIA"). By 2027, the AIA will be in full effect, and firms are starting to adjust their behavior in light of this new law. In this paper, we present a framework and taxonomy for reasoning about "avoision" -- conduct that walks the line between legal avoidance and evasion -- that firms might engage in so as to minimize the regulatory burden the AIA poses. We organize these avoision strategies around three "tiers" of increasing AIA exposure that regulated entities face depending on: whether their activities are (1) within scope of the AIA, (2) exempted from provisions of the AIA, or are (3) placed in a category with higher regulatory scrutiny. In each of these tiers and for each strategy, we specify the organizational and technological forms through which avoision may manifest. Our goal is to provide an adversarial framework for "red teaming" the AIA and AI regulation on the horizon.

Continual learning aims to learn knowledge of tasks observed in sequential time steps while mitigating the forgetting of previously learned knowledge. Existing methods were proposed under the assumption of learning a single modality (e.g., image) over time, which limits their applicability in scenarios involving multiple modalities. In this work, we propose a novel continual learning framework that accommodates multiple modalities (image, video, audio, depth, and text). We train a model to align various modalities with text, leveraging its rich semantic information. However, this increases the risk of forgetting previously learned knowledge, exacerbated by the differing input traits of each task. To alleviate the overwriting of the previous knowledge of modalities, we propose a method for aggregating knowledge within and across modalities. The aggregated knowledge is obtained by assimilating new information through self-regularization within each modality and associating knowledge between modalities by prioritizing contributions from relevant modalities. Furthermore, we propose a strategy that re-aligns the embeddings of modalities to resolve biased alignment between modalities. We evaluate the proposed method in a wide range of continual learning scenarios using multiple datasets with different modalities. Extensive experiments demonstrate that ours outperforms existing methods in the scenarios, regardless of whether the identity of the modality is given.

The EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) establishes different legal principles for different types of AI systems. While prior work has sought to clarify some of these principles, little attention has been paid to robustness and cybersecurity. This paper aims to fill this gap. We identify legal challenges and shortcomings in provisions related to robustness and cybersecurity for high-risk AI systems (Art. 15 AIA) and general-purpose AI models (Art. 55 AIA). We show that robustness and cybersecurity demand resilience against performance disruptions. Furthermore, we assess potential challenges in implementing these provisions in light of recent advancements in the machine learning (ML) literature. Our analysis informs efforts to develop harmonized standards, guidelines by the European Commission, as well as benchmarks and measurement methodologies under Art. 15(2) AIA. With this, we seek to bridge the gap between legal terminology and ML research, fostering a better alignment between research and implementation efforts.

What constitutes a fair decision? This question is not only difficult for humans but becomes more challenging when Artificial Intelligence (AI) models are used. In light of discriminatory algorithmic behaviors, the EU has recently passed the AI Act, which mandates specific rules for AI models, incorporating both traditional legal non-discrimination regulations and machine learning based algorithmic fairness concepts. This paper aims to bridge these two different concepts in the AI Act through: First a high-level introduction of both concepts targeting legal and computer science-oriented scholars, and second an in-depth analysis of the AI Act's relationship between legal non-discrimination regulations and algorithmic fairness. Our analysis reveals three key findings: (1.), most non-discrimination regulations target only high-risk AI systems. (2.), the regulation of high-risk systems encompasses both data input requirements and output monitoring, though these regulations are often inconsistent and raise questions of computational feasibility. (3.) Regulations for General Purpose AI Models, such as Large Language Models that are not simultaneously classified as high-risk systems, currently lack specificity compared to other regulations. Based on these findings, we recommend developing more specific auditing and testing methodologies for AI systems. This paper aims to serve as a foundation for future interdisciplinary collaboration between legal scholars and computer science-oriented machine learning researchers studying discrimination in AI systems.

This paper investigates the role of AI assistants, specifically OpenAI's ChatGPT, in teaching formal methods (FM) to undergraduate students, using the B-method as a formal specification technique. While existing studies demonstrate the effectiveness of AI in coding tasks, no study reports on its impact on formal specifications. We examine whether ChatGPT provides an advantage when writing B-specifications and analyse student trust in its outputs. Our findings indicate that the AI does not help students to enhance the correctness of their specifications, with low trust correlating to better outcomes. Additionally, we identify a behavioural pattern with which to interact with ChatGPT which may influence the correctness of B-specifications.

The EU AI Act (AIA) mandates the implementation of a risk management system (RMS) and a quality management system (QMS) for high-risk AI systems. The ISO/IEC 42001 standard provides a foundation for fulfilling these requirements but does not cover all EU-specific regulatory stipulations. To enhance the implementation of the AIA in Germany, the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) could introduce the national standard BSI 200-5, which specifies AIA requirements and integrates existing ISMS standards, such as ISO/IEC 27001. This paper examines the interfaces between an information security management system (ISMS) and an AI management system (AIMS), demonstrating that incorporating existing ISMS controls with specific AI extensions presents an effective strategy for complying with Article 15 of the AIA. Four new AI modules are introduced, proposed for inclusion in the BSI IT Grundschutz framework to comprehensively ensure the security of AI systems. Additionally, an approach for adapting BSI's qualification and certification systems is outlined to ensure that expertise in secure AI handling is continuously developed. Finally, the paper discusses how the BSI could bridge international standards and the specific requirements of the AIA through the nationalization of ISO/IEC 42001, creating synergies and bolstering the competitiveness of the German AI landscape.

The use of AI technologies is percolating into the secure development of software-based systems, with an increasing trend of composing AI-based subsystems (with uncertain levels of performance) into automated pipelines. This presents a fundamental research challenge and poses a serious threat to safety-critical domains (e.g., aviation). Despite the existing knowledge about uncertainty in risk analysis, no previous work has estimated the uncertainty of AI-augmented systems given the propagation of errors in the pipeline. We provide the formal underpinnings for capturing uncertainty propagation, develop a simulator to quantify uncertainty, and evaluate the simulation of propagating errors with two case studies. We discuss the generalizability of our approach and present policy implications and recommendations for aviation. Future work includes extending the approach and investigating the required metrics for validation in the aviation domain.