AI hungers for data. Considering that fact, as more data is collected and used to power AI systems, concerns about privacy are on the rise.
In a study by Intouch International (PDF), it was found that 9 in 10 internet users in the U.S. are concerned about the privacy and security of their personal information online. As interest in privacy preserving methods for machine learning grows, there should be standards to be agreed upon by the community - spanning both business and academia.
One of the methods, is by using homomorphic encryption, or 'HE'. This helps data scientists and researchers generate insights from sensitive data, but without decrypting them using AI computation.
This method is designed purposefully to ensure privacy protection in cloud and machine learning AIs.
To govern how HE works, Intel partners with Microsoft Research and Duality Technologies to create standards for this HE technology.
On August 17th, the companies gather nearly 100 artificial intelligence, privacy and security stakeholders for the HE standards workshop at Intel’s campus in Santa Clara, California.
According to Casimir Wierzynski, senior director, office of the CTO, AI Products Group, Intel:
And according to Kristin Lautner, partner research manager, for Cryptography and Privacy Research Group at Microsoft:
"We are confident that the collaboration between Microsoft, Intel, and Duality Technologies on the 4th Homomorphic Encryption Standardization Workshop will accelerate the standardization process and decrease the time to commercial availability of this important privacy protection tool."
HE allows AI computation on encrypted data, enabling data scientists and researchers to gain valuable insights without decrypting or exposing the underlying data or models.
This is particularly useful in instances where data may be sensitive.
And with the workshop that Intel hosts, the three companies targeted researchers, application developers, security practitioners and encryption expert.
The full-day workshop provides an introduction to HE, review usability for application developers and real-life applications, present the latest research, and include a group discussion on creating HE standards.
