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Paper on graph database schemata wins best-industry-paper award

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Where a standard relational database stores data in linked tables, graph databases store data in graphs, where the edges represent relationships between data items. Graph databases are popular with customers for use cases like single-customer view, fraud detection, recommendations, and security, where you need to create relationships between data and quickly navigate these connections. Amazon Neptune is AWS’s graph database service, which is designed for scalability and availability and allows our customers to query billions of relationships in milliseconds.

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In this blog post, we present joint work on a schema language for graph databases, which was carried out under the umbrella of the Linked Data Benchmarking Council (LDBC), a nonprofit organization that brings together leading organizations and academics from the graph database space. A schema is a way of defining the structure of a database — the data types permitted, the possible relationships between them, and the logical constraints upon them (such as uniqueness of entities).

This work is important to customers because it will allow them to describe and define the structures of their graphs in a way that is portable across vendors and makes building graph applications faster. We presented our work in a paper that won the best-industry-paper award at this year’s meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD).

Labeled-property graphs

The labeled-property-graph (LPG) data model is a prominent choice for building graph applications. LPGs build upon three primitives to model graph-shaped data: nodes, edges, and properties. The figure below represents an excerpt from a labeled property graph in a financial-fraud scenario. Nodes are represented as green circles, edges are represented as directed arrows connecting nodes, and properties are enclosed in orange boxes.

The node with identifier 1, for instance, is labeled Customer and carries two properties, specifying the name with string value “Jane Doe” and a customerId. Both node 1 and 2 two are connected to node 3, which represents a shared account with a fixed iban number; the two edges are marked with the label Owns, which specifies the nature of the relationship. Just like vertices, edges can carry properties. In this example, the property since specifies 2021-03-05 as the start date of ownership.

Sample graph representing two customers that own a shared account.

Relational vs. graph schema

 One property that differentiates graph databases from, for instance, relational databases — where the schema needs to be defined upfront and is often hard to change — is that graph databases do not require explicit schema definitions. To illustrate the difference, compare the graph data model from the figure above to a comparable relational-database schema, shown below, with the primary-key attributes underlined.

A possible relational-database model for the scenario above.

Schema-level information of the relational model — tables and attribute names — are represented as part of the data itself in graphs. Said otherwise, by inserting or changing graph elements such as node labels, edge labels, and property names, one can extend or change the schema implicitly, without having to run (oftentimes tedious) schema manipulations such as ALTER TABLE commands.

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As an example, in a graph database one can simply add an edge with the previously unseen label Knows to connect the two nodes representing Jane Doe and John Doe or introduce nodes with new labels (such as FinancialTransaction) at any time. Such extensions would require table manipulations in our relational sample schema.

The absence of an explicit schema is a key differentiator that lowers the burden of getting started with data modeling and application building in graphs: following a pay-as-you-go paradigm, graph application developers who build new applications can start out with a small portion of the data and insert new node types, properties, and interconnecting edges as their applications evolve, without having to maintain explicit schemata.

Schemata evolution

While this contributes to the initial velocity of building graph applications, what we often see is that — throughout the life cycle of graph applications — it becomes desirable to shift from implicit to explicit schemata. Once the database has been seeded with an initial (and typically yet-to-be-refined) version of the graph data, there is a demand for what we call flexible-schema support. 

Evolution of schema requirements throughout the graph application life cycle.

In that stage, the schema primarily plays a descriptive role: knowing the most important node/edge labels and their properties tells application developers what to expect in the data and guides them in writing queries. As the application life cycle progresses, the graph data model stabilizes, and developers may benefit from a more rigorous, prescriptive schema approach that strongly asserts shapes and logical invariants in the graph.

PG-Schema

Motivated by these requirements, our SIGMOD publication proposes a data definition language (DDL) called PG-Schema, which aims to expose the full breadth of schema flexibility to users. The figure below shows a visual representation of such a graph schema, as well as the corresponding syntactical representation, as it could be provided by a data architect or application developer to formally define the schema of our fraud graph example.

Schema for the graph data from the graph database above (left: graphical representation; right: corresponding data definition language).

In this example, the overall schema is composed of the six elements enclosed in the top-level GRAPH TYPE definition:

  • The first three lines of the GRAPH TYPE definition introduce so-called node types: person, customer, and account; they describe structural constraints on the nodes in the graph data. The customer node type, for instance, tells us that there can be nodes with label Customer, which carry a property customerId and are derived from a more general person node type. Concretely, this means that nodes with the label Customer inherit the properties name and birthDate defined in node type person. Note that properties also specify a data type (such as string, date, or numerical values) and may be marked as optional.
  • Edge types build upon node types and specify the type and structure of edges that connect nodes. Our example defines a single edge type connecting nodes of node type customer with nodes of type account. Informally speaking, this tells us that Customer-labeled nodes in our data graph can be connected to Account-labeled nodes via an edge labeled Owns, which is annotated with a property since, pointing to a date value.
  • The last two lines specify additional constraints that go beyond the mere structure of our graph. The KEY constraint demands that the value of the iban property uniquely identifies an account, i.e., no two Account-labeled nodes can share the same IBAN number. This can be thought of as the equivalent of primary keys in relational databases, which enforce the uniqueness of one or more attributes within the scope of a given table. The second constraint enforces that every account has at least one owner, which is reminiscent of a foreign-key constraint in relational databases.

Also note the keyword STRICT in the graph type definition: it enforces that all elements in the graph obey one of the types defined in the graph type body, and that all constraints are satisfied. Concretely, it implies that our graph can contain onlyPerson-, Customer-, and Account-labeled nodes with the respective sets of properties that the only possible edge type is between customers and accounts with label Owns and that the key and foreign constraints must be satisfied. Hence, the STRICT keyword can be understood as a mechanism to implement the schema-first paradigm, as it is maximally prescriptive and strongly constrains the graph structure.

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To account for flexible- and partial-schema use cases, PG-Schema offers a LOOSE keyword as an alternative to STRICT, which comes with a more relaxed interpretation: graph types that are defined as LOOSE allow for node and edge types that are not explicitly listed in the graph type definition. Mechanisms similar to STRICT vs. LOOSE keywords at graph type level can be found at different levels of the language.

For instance, keywords such as OPEN (vs. the implicit default, CLOSED) can be used to either partially or fully specify the set of properties that can be carried by vertices with a given vertex label (e.g., expressing that a Person-labeled node must have a name but may have an arbitrary set of other (unknown) properties, without requiring enumeration of the entire set). The flexibility arising from these mechanisms makes it easy to define partial schemata that can be adjusted and refined incrementally, to capture the schema evolution requirements sketched above.

Not only does PG-Schema provide a concrete proposal for a graph schema and constraint language, but it also aims to raise awareness of the importance of a standardized approach to graph schemata. The concepts and ideas in the paper were codeveloped by major companies and academics in the graph space, and there are ongoing initiatives within the LDBC that aim toward a standardization of these concepts.

In particular, the LDBC has close ties with the ISO committee that is currently in the process of standardizing a new graph query language (GQL). As some GQL ISO committee members are coauthors of the PG-Schema paper, there has been a continuous bilateral exchange, and it is anticipated that future versions of the GQL standard will include a rich DDL, which may pick up concepts and ideas presented in the paper.





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An inside look at Meta’s transition from C to Rust on mobile

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Have you ever worked is legacy code? Are you curious what it takes to modernize systems at a massive scale?

Pascal Hartig is joined on the latest Meta Tech Podcast by Elaine and Buping, two software engineers working on a bold project to rewrite the decades-old C code in one of Meta’s core messaging libraries in Rust. It’s an ambitious effort that will transform a central messaging library that is shared across Messenger, Facebook, Instagram, and Meta’s AR/VR platforms.

They discuss taking on a project of this scope – even without a background in Rust, how they’re approaching it, and what it means to optimize for ‘developer happiness.’

Download or listen to the episode below:

You can also find the episode wherever you get your podcasts, including:

The Meta Tech Podcast is a podcast, brought to you by Meta, where we highlight the work Meta’s engineers are doing at every level – from low-level frameworks to end-user features.

Send us feedback on InstagramThreads, or X.

And if you’re interested in learning more about career opportunities at Meta visit the Meta Careers page.





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Amazon Research Awards recipients announced

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Amazon Research Awards (ARA) provides unrestricted funds and AWS Promotional Credits to academic researchers investigating various research topics in multiple disciplines. This cycle, ARA received many excellent research proposals from across the world and today is publicly announcing 73 award recipients who represent 46 universities in 10 countries.

This announcement includes awards funded under five call for proposals during the fall 2024 cycle: AI for Information Security, Automated Reasoning, AWS AI, AWS Cryptography, and Sustainability. Proposals were reviewed for the quality of their scientific content and their potential to impact both the research community and society. Additionally, Amazon encourages the publication of research results, presentations of research at Amazon offices worldwide, and the release of related code under open-source licenses.

Recipients have access to more than 700 Amazon public datasets and can utilize AWS AI/ML services and tools through their AWS Promotional Credits. Recipients also are assigned an Amazon research contact who offers consultation and advice, along with opportunities to participate in Amazon events and training sessions.

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“Automated Reasoning is an important area of research for Amazon, with potential applications across various features and applications to help improve security, reliability, and performance for our customers. Through the ARA program, we collaborate with leading academic researchers to explore challenges in this field,” said Robert Jones, senior principal scientist with the Cloud Automated Reasoning Group. “We were again impressed by the exceptional response to our Automated Reasoning call for proposals this year, receiving numerous high-quality submissions. Congratulations to the recipients! We’re excited to support their work and partner with them as they develop new science and technology in this important area.”

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“At Amazon, we believe that solving the world’s toughest sustainability challenges benefits from both breakthrough scientific research and open and bold collaboration. Through programs like the Amazon Research Awards program, we aim to support academic research that could contribute to our understanding of these complex issues,” said Kommy Weldemariam, Director of Science and Innovation Sustainability. “The selected proposals represent innovative projects that we hope will help advance knowledge in this field, potentially benefiting customers, communities, and the environment.”

ARA funds proposals throughout the year in a variety of research areas. Applicants are encouraged to visit the ARA call for proposals page for more information or send an email to be notified of future open calls.

The tables below list, in alphabetical order by last name, fall 2024 cycle call-for-proposal recipients, sorted by research area.

AI for Information Security

Recipient University Research title
Christopher Amato Northeastern University Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Cyber Defense for Securing Cloud Computing Platforms
Bernd Bischl Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Improving Generative and Foundation Models Reliability via Uncertainty-awareness
Shiqing Ma University Of Massachusetts Amherst LLM and Domain Adaptation for Attack Detection
Alina Oprea Northeastern University Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Cyber Defense for Securing Cloud Computing Platforms
Roberto Perdisci University of Georgia ContextADBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark Suite for Contextual Anomaly Detection

Automated Reasoning

Recipient University Research title
Nada Amin Harvard University LLM-Augmented Semi-Automated Proofs for Interactive Verification
Suguman Bansal Georgia Institute of Technology Certified Inductive Generalization in Reinforcement Learning
Ioana Boureanu University of Surrey Phoebe+: An Automated-Reasoning Tool for Provable Privacy in Cryptographic Systems
Omar Haider Chowdhury Stony Brook University Restricter: An Automatic Tool for Authoring Amazon Cedar Access Control Policies with the Principle of Least Privilege
Stefan Ciobaca Alexandru Ioan Cuza University An Interactive Proof Mode for Dafny
João Ferreira INESC-ID Polyglot Automated Program Repair for Infrastructure as Code
Sicun Gao University Of California, San Diego Monte Carlo Trees with Conflict Models for Proof Search
Mirco Giacobbe University of Birmingham Neural Software Verification
Tobias Grosser University of Cambridge Synthesis-based Symbolic BitVector Simplification for Lean
Ronghui Gu Columbia University Scaling Formal Verification of Security Properties for Unmodified System Software
Alexey Ignatiev Monash University Huub: Next-Gen Lazy Clause Generation
Kenneth McMillan University of Texas At Austin Synthesis of Auxiliary Variables and Invariants for Distributed Protocol Verification
Alexandra Mendes University of Porto Overcoming Barriers to the Adoption of Verification-Aware Languages
Jason Nieh Columbia University Scaling Formal Verification of Security Properties for Unmodified System Software
Rohan Padhye Carnegie Mellon University Automated Synthesis and Evaluation of Property-Based Tests
Nadia Polikarpova University Of California, San Diego Discovering and Proving Critical System Properties with LLMs
Fortunat Rajaona University of Surrey Phoebe+: An Automated-Reasoning Tool for Provable Privacy in Cryptographic Systems
Subhajit Roy Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur Theorem Proving Modulo LLM
Gagandeep Singh University of Illinois At Urbana–Champaign Trustworthy LLM Systems using Formal Contracts
Scott Stoller Stony Brook University Restricter: An Automatic Tool for Authoring Amazon Cedar Access Control Policies with the Principle of Least Privilege
Peter Stuckey Monash University Huub: Next-Gen Lazy Clause Generation
Yulei Sui University of New South Wales Path-Sensitive Typestate Analysis through Sparse Abstract Execution
Nikos Vasilakis Brown University Semantics-Driven Static Analysis for the Unix/Linux Shell
Ping Wang Stevens Institute of Technology Leveraging Large Language Models for Reasoning Augmented Searching on Domain-specific NoSQL Database
John Wawrzynek University of California, Berkeley GPU-Accelerated High-Throughput SAT Sampling

AWS AI

Recipient University Research title
Panagiotis Adamopoulos Emory University Generative AI solutions for The Spillover Effect of Fraudulent Reviews on Product Recommendations
Vikram Adve University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Fellini: Differentiable ML Compiler for Full-Graph Optimization for LLM Models
Frances Arnold California Institute of Technology Closed-loop Generative Machine Learning for De Novo Enzyme Discovery and Optimization
Yonatan Bisk Carnegie Mellon University Useful, Safe, and Robust Multiturn Interactions with LLMs
Shiyu Chang University of California, Santa Barbara Cut the Crap: Advancing the Efficient Communication of Multi-Agent Systems via Spatial-Temporal Topology Design and KV Cache Sharing
Yuxin Chen University of Pennsylvania Provable Acceleration of Diffusion Models for Modern Generative AI
Tianlong Chen University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Cut the Crap: Advancing the Efficient Communication of Multi-Agent Systems via Spatial-Temporal Topology Design and KV Cache Sharing
Mingyu Ding University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Aligning Long Videos and Language as Long-Horizon World Models
Nikhil Garg Cornell University Market Design for Responsible Multi-agent LLMs
Jessica Hullman Northwestern University Human-Aligned Uncertainty Quantification in High Dimensions
Christopher Jermaine Rice University Fast, Trusted AI Using the EINSUMMABLE Compiler
Yunzhu Li Columbia University Physics-Informed Foundation Models Through Embodied Interactions
Pattie Maes Massachusetts Institute of Technology Understanding How LLM Agents Deviate from Human Choices
Sasa Misailovic University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Fellini: Differentiable ML Compiler for Full-Graph Optimization for LLM Models
Kristina Monakhova Cornell University Trustworthy extreme imaging for science using interpretable uncertainty quantification
Todd Mowry Carnegie Mellon University Efficient LLM Serving on Trainium via Kernel Generation
Min-hwan Oh Seoul National University Mutually Beneficial Interplay Between Selection Fairness and Context Diversity in Contextual Bandits
Patrick Rebeschini University of Oxford Optimal Regularization for LLM Alignment
Jose Renau University of California, Santa Cruz Verification Constrained Hardware Optimization using Intelligent Design Agentic Programming
Vilma Todri Emory University Generative AI solutions for The Spillover Effect of Fraudulent Reviews on Product Recommendations
Aravindan Vijayaraghavan Northwestern University Human-Aligned Uncertainty Quantification in High Dimensions
Wei Yang University of Texas at Dallas Optimizing RISC-V Compilers with RISC-LLM and Syntax Parsing
Huaxiu Yao University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Aligning Long Videos and Language as Long-Horizon World Models
Amy Zhang University of Washington Tools for Governing AI Agent Autonomy
Ruqi Zhang Purdue University Efficient Test-time Alignment for Large Language Models and Large Multimodal Models
Zheng Zhang Rutgers University-New Brunswick AlphaQC: An AI-powered Quantum Circuit Optimizer and Denoiser

AWS Cryptography

Recipient University Research title
Alexandra Boldyreva Georgia Institute of Technology Quantifying Information Leakage in Searchable Encryption Protocols
Maria Eichlseder Graz University of Technology, Austria SALAD – Systematic Analysis of Lightweight Ascon-based Designs
Venkatesan Guruswami University of California, Berkeley Obfuscation, Proof Systems, and Secure Computation: A Research Program on Cryptography at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing
Joseph Jaeger Georgia Institute of Technology Analyzing Chat Encryption for Group Messaging
Aayush Jain Carnegie Mellon Large Scale Multiparty Silent Preprocessing for MPC from LPN
Huijia Lin University of Washington Large Scale Multiparty Silent Preprocessing for MPC from LPN
Hamed Nemati KTH Royal Institute of Technology Trustworthy Automatic Verification of Side-Channel Countermeasures for Binary Cryptographic Programs using the HoIBA libary
Karl Palmskog KTH Royal Institute of Technology Trustworthy Automatic Verification of Side-Channel Countermeasures for Binary Cryptographic Programs using the HoIBA libary
Chris Peikert University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Practical Third-Generation FHE and Bootstrapping
Dimitrios Skarlatos Carnegie Mellon University Scale-Out FHE LLMs on GPUs
Vinod Vaikuntanathan Massachusetts Institute of Technology Can Quantum Computers (Really) Factor?
Daniel Wichs Northeastern University Obfuscation, Proof Systems, and Secure Computation: A Research Program on Cryptography at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing
David Wu University Of Texas At Austin Fast Private Information Retrieval and More using Homomorphic Encryption

Sustainability

Recipient University Research title
Meeyoung Cha Max Planck Institute Forest-Blossom (Flossom): A New Framework for Sustaining Forest Biodiversity Through Outcome-Driven Remote Sensing Monitoring
Jingrui He University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Foundation Model Enabled Earth’s Ecosystem Monitoring
Pedro Lopes University of Chicago AI-powered Tools that Enable Engineers to Make & Re-make Sustainable Hardware
Cheng Yaw Low Max Planck Institute Forest-Blossom (Flossom): A New Framework for Sustaining Forest Biodiversity Through Outcome-Driven Remote Sensing Monitoring





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Independent evaluations demonstrate Nova Premier’s safety

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AI safety is a priority at Amazon. Our investment in safe, transparent, and responsible AI (RAI) includes collaboration with the global community and policymakers. We are members of and collaborate with organizations such as the Frontier Model Forum, the Partnership on AI, and other forums organized by government agencies such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Consistent with Amazon’s endorsement of the Korea Frontier AI Safety Commitments, we published our Frontier Model Safety Framework earlier this year.

Amazon Nova Premier’s guardrails help prevent generation of unsafe content.

During the development of the Nova Premier model, we conducted a comprehensive evaluation to assess its performance and safety. This included testing on both internal and public benchmarks and internal/automated and third-party red-teaming exercises. Once the final model was ready, we prioritized obtaining unbiased, third-party evaluations of the model’s robustness against RAI controls. In this post, we outline the key findings from these evaluations, demonstrating the strength of our testing approach and Amazon Premier’s standing as a safe model. Specifically, we cover our evaluations with two third-party evaluators: PRISM AI and ActiveFence.

Evaluation of Nova Premier against PRISM AI

PRISM Eval’s Behavior Elicitation Tool (BET) dynamically and systematically stress-tests AI models’ safety guardrails. The methodology focuses on measuring how many adversarial attempts (steps) it takes to get a model to generate harmful content across several key risk dimensions. The central metric is “steps to elicit” — the number of increasingly sophisticated prompting attempts required before a model generates an inappropriate response. A higher number of steps indicates stronger safety measures, as the model is more resistant to manipulation. The PRISM risk dimensions (inspired by the MLCommons AI Safety Benchmarks) include CBRNE weapons, violent crimes, non-violent crimes, defamation, and hate, amongst several others.

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From reinforcement learning and supervised fine-tuning to guardrail models and image watermarking, responsible AI was foundational to the design and development of the Amazon Nova family of models.

Using the BET Eval tool and its V1.0 metric, which is tailored toward non-reasoning models, we compared the recently released Nova models (Pro and Premier) to the latest models in the same class: Claude (3.5 v2 and 3.7 non-reasoning) and Llama4 Maverick, all available through Amazon Bedrock. PRISM BET conducts black-box evaluations (where model developers don’t have access to the test prompts) of models integrated with their API. The evaluation conducted with BET Eval MAX, PRISM’s most comprehensive/aggressive testing suite, revealed significant variations in safety against malicious instructions. Nova models demonstrated superior overall safety performance, with an average of 43 steps for Premier and 52 steps for Pro, compared to 37.7 for Claude 3.5 v2 and fewer than 12 steps for other models in the comparison set (namely, 9.9 for Claude3.7, 11.5 for Claude 3.7 thinking, and 6.5 for Maverick). This higher step count suggests that on average, Nova’s safety guardrails are more sophisticated and harder to circumvent through adversarial prompting. The figure below presents the number of steps per harm category evaluated through BET Eval MAX.

Results of tests using PRISM’s BET Eval MAX testing suite.

The PRISM evaluation provides valuable insights into the relative safety of different Amazon Bedrock models. Nova’s strong performance, particularly in hate speech and defamation resistance, represents meaningful progress in AI safety. However, the results also highlight the ongoing challenge of building truly robust safety measures into AI systems. As the field continues to evolve, frameworks like BET will play an increasingly important role in benchmarking and improving AI safety. As a part of this collaboration Nicolas Miailhe, CEO of PRISM Eval, said, “It’s incredibly rewarding for us to see Nova outperforming strong baselines using the BET Eval MAX; our aim is to build a long-term partnership toward safer-by-design models and to make BET available to various model providers.” Organizations deploying AI systems should carefully consider these safety metrics when selecting models for their applications.

Manual red teaming with ActiveFence

The AI safety & security company ActiveFence benchmarked Nova Premier on Bedrock on prompts distributed across Amazon’s eight core RAI categories. ActiveFence also evaluated Claude 3.7 (non-reasoning mode) and GPT 4.1 API on the same set. The flag rate on Nova Premier was lower than that on the other two models, indicating that Nova Premier is the safest of the three.

Model 3P Flag Rate [↓ is better]
Nova Premier 12.0%
Sonnet 3.7 (non-reasoning) 20.6%
GPT4.1 API 22.4%

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Generative AI raises new challenges in defining, measuring, and mitigating concerns about fairness, toxicity, and intellectual property, among other things. But work has started on the solutions.

“Our role is to think like an adversary but act in service of safety,” said Guy Paltieli from ActiveFence. “By conducting a blind stress test of Nova Premier under realistic threat scenarios, we helped evaluate its security posture in support of Amazon’s broader responsible-AI goals, ensuring the model could be deployed with greater confidence.”

These evaluations conducted with PRISM and ActiveFence give us confidence in the strength of our guardrails and our ability to protect our customers’ safety when they use our models. While these evaluations demonstrate strong safety performance, we recognize that AI safety is an ongoing challenge requiring continuous improvement. These assessments represent a point-in-time snapshot, and we remain committed to regular testing and enhancement of our safety measures. No AI system can guarantee perfect safety in all scenarios, which is why we maintain monitoring and response systems after deployment.

Acknowledgments: Vincent Ponzo, Elyssa Vincent





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