Google Tool Lets Any AI App Learn Without Taking All Your Data

A new computing tool developed by Google will let developers build AI-powered apps. The upside is it's doing so without sucking up all of your information. From a report: Google on Wednesday released TensorFlow Federated, open-source software that incorporates federated learning, an AI training system. It works by using data that's spread out across a lot of devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to teach itself new tricks. But rather than send the data back to a central server for study, it learns on your phone or tablet itself and sends only the lesson back to the app maker.

Federated learning runs "part of the machine learning algorithm right next to where the data is on the device," Alex Ingerman, a product manager at Google Research, said in an interview. The algorithm applies what it already knows to the data on your phone, such as suggesting replies to emails, and creates a summary of what it learned in the process to send back.

Re:

[DickBreath]

Do you send the raw sensor data to the mother ship, or are you using federated learning?

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

It still sends your personal data summed up in a nice little file. It just uses your CPU cycles to process and summarize it before it sends it on to Google.

Re:

[DickBreath]

The summed up part is one or more matrix of interconnection weights. So the original raw data is no longer present in what is sent to the mother ship. That's the point.

Re:

[DickBreath]

I think you have to agree to this first. But consider this hypothetical complaint uttered in a single breath:

I just hate how much Google knows about me! Hey Google, can you recommend a movie I might like?

Compression

[goombah99]

Exactly, AI's are basically compressors. It's already been demonstrated one can extract things like social security numbers and stuff from trained AIs that don't actually output SS numbers. Like Ragu spaghetti sauce, it's in there, just not recognizably at a glance.

Running code

[ghoul]

So now instead of merely sharing my data, I am going to have to allow Google to run code on my devices. Somehow I feel giving execution privileges is a bigger hole than data privileges. Next they will ask for your bank details so they can keep you safe from being hacked....

Re:

[Aristos Mazer]

It's full source code, not compiled executables, so you can check it for behavior you don't like.

Re:

[ghoul]

Not everyone is a coder but even non coders know letting a program run on your machine is a lot more dangerous than sharing data.

Re:

[Aristos Mazer]

The whole point of this is that you aren't sharing data.

The downside:

[Gravis Zero]

The upside is it's doing so without sucking up all of your information.

The downside is that it's going to suck up all your information for other reasons. ;)

"sends only the lesson back to the app maker"

[ffkom]

Sure, just like the Google Streetview cars were of course only taking photos of the streets [wired.com]. That corporation turned evil a long time ago.

Umm... so metadata.

[Eubeleus]

Learning about your behavior/data habits is just another form of personal data.