# Trustworthy Distributed AI Systems: Robustness, Privacy, and Governance

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.01096 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01096/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 165 of its 247 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Feb 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 165)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6572/) (2014)
- [Towards Deep Learning Models Resistant to Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.06083/) (2017)
- [Intriguing properties of neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6199/) (2013)
- [Towards Evaluating the Robustness of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.04644/) (2016)
- [Deep Learning with Differential Privacy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.00133/) (2016)
- [A Baseline for Detecting Misclassified and Out-of-Distribution Examples in Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02136/) (2016)
- [Membership Inference Attacks against Machine Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05820/) (2016)
- [Extracting Training Data from Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07805/) (2020)
- [Equality of Opportunity in Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02413/) (2016)
- [A Survey on Bias and Fairness in Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09635/) (2019)
- [Adversarial examples in the physical world](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.02533/) (2016)
- [A Simple Unified Framework for Detecting Out-of-Distribution Samples and Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03888/) (2018)
- [Certified Adversarial Robustness via Randomized Smoothing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.02918/) (2019)
- [Enhancing The Reliability of Out-of-distribution Image Detection in Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02690/) (2017)
- [DeepFool: a simple and accurate method to fool deep neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.04599/) (2015)
- [Obfuscated Gradients Give a False Sense of Security: Circumventing Defenses to Adversarial Examples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.00420/) (2018)
- [RealToxicityPrompts: Evaluating Neural Toxic Degeneration in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.11462/) (2020)
- [On the Convergence of FedAvg on Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02189/) (2019)
- [Federated Learning with Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.00582/) (2018)
- [Machine Unlearning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.03817/) (2019)
- [Deep Leakage from Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08935/) (2019)
- [Ethical and social risks of harm from Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.04359/) (2021)
- [Ensemble Adversarial Training: Attacks and Defenses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07204/) (2017)
- [Ignore Previous Prompt: Attack Techniques For Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09527/) (2022)
- [Counterfactual Fairness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06856/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Open Challenges in Multi-Agent Security: Towards Secure Systems of Interacting AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.02077/) (2025)
- [HtFLlib: A Comprehensive Heterogeneous Federated Learning Library and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03954/) (2025)
- [Trustworthy Machine Learning via Memorization and the Granular Long-Tail: A Survey on Interactions, Tradeoffs, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07501/) (2025)
- [A Model Consistency-Based Countermeasure to GAN-Based Data Poisoning Attack in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11440/) (2024)
- [Edge General Intelligence Through World Models and Agentic AI: Fundamentals, Solutions, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09561/) (2025)
- [Joint Universal Adversarial Perturbations with Interpretations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01715/) (2024)
- [Adversarial Robustness in Distributed Quantum Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.11848/) (2025)
- [CUFG: Curriculum Unlearning Guided by the Forgetting Gradient](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.14633/) (2025)
- [Trustworthy AI Posture (TAIP): A Framework for Continuous AI Assurance of Agentic Systems at Horizontal and Vertical scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03340/) (2026)
- [From Privacy to Trust in the Agentic Era: A Taxonomy of Challenges in Trustworthy Federated Learning Through the Lens of Trust Report 2.0](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15796/) (2025)
- [Rethinking Inference Placement for Deep Learning across Edge and Cloud Platforms: A Multi-Objective Optimization Perspective and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.22909/) (2025)
- [Mechanical Conscience: A Mathematical Framework for Dependability of Machine Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.03847/) (2026)
- [Trustworthy Data- and ML-Ops for Intelligent Transportation Systems and Logistics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.01282/) (2026)
- [Actionable Meta-Requirements for AI Robustness Auditing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14356/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Emerging Distributed AI systems are revolutionizing big data computing and data processing capabilities with growing economic and societal impact. However, recent studies have identified new attack surfaces and risks caused by security, privacy, and fairness issues in AI systems. In this paper, we review representative techniques, algorithms, and theoretical foundations for trustworthy distributed AI through robustness guarantee, privacy protection, and fairness awareness in distributed learning. We first provide a brief overview of alternative architectures for distributed learning, discuss inherent vulnerabilities for security, privacy, and fairness of AI algorithms in distributed learning, and analyze why these problems are present in distributed learning regardless of specific architectures. Then we provide a unique taxonomy of countermeasures for trustworthy distributed AI, covering (1) robustness to evasion attacks and irregular queries at inference, and robustness to poisoning attacks, Byzantine attacks, and irregular data distribution during training; (2) privacy protection during distributed learning and model inference at deployment; and (3) AI fairness and governance with respect to both data and models. We conclude with a discussion on open challenges and future research directions toward trustworthy distributed AI, such as the need for trustworthy AI policy guidelines, the AI responsibility-utility co-design, and incentives and compliance.