Can Privacy and Machine Learning Work Together?
When it comes to privacy on the internet, people often push back against the biggest innovators and advancements because of the bad wrap they get on privacy issues. Machine learning is no exception. It worries people that their data will be processed with enough complexity to predict their future behavior.
Current State of Privacy in Machine Learning
Machine learning is a tool for processing large amounts of data, and creating models to make decisions with minimal human intervention. Privacy and machine learning are at odds because the data used for training the systems requires access to (sometimes) private information. One of the goals of machine learning is to monitor a population and based on its observations, make predictions about the population’s, or individuals within this population’s, future actions.
Once artificial intelligence systems are applied in ways that greatly improve how internet connected tools work for us, people’s concerns will likely subside. It’s still easy to imagine how these systems could get out of control. The general public has very little understanding of how these systems work, and the companies that are driving machine learning forward aren’t giving people much transparency into their processes. Machine learning and artificial intelligence systems…
