My former postdoc Lingjuan Lyu has been working with a few research collaborators on a fair and privacy-preserving federated deep-learning framework and a paper describing the framework has just been published at the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems. Here’s the paper details:
Title: Towards Fair and Privacy-Preserving Federated Deep Models
Abstract: The current standalone deep learning framework tends to result in overfitting and low utility. This problem can be addressed by either a centralized framework that deploys a central server to train a global model on the joint data from all parties, or a distributed framework that leverages a parameter server to aggregate local model updates. Server-based solutions are prone to the problem of a single-point-of-failure. In this respect, collaborative learning frameworks, such as federated learning (FL), are more robust. Existing federated learning frameworks overlook an important aspect of participation: fairness. All parties are given the same final model without regard to their contributions. To address these issues, we propose a decentralized Fair and Privacy-Preserving Deep Learning (FPPDL) framework to incorporate fairness into federated deep learning models. In particular, we design a local credibility mutual evaluation mechanism to guarantee fairness, and a three-layer onion-style encryption scheme to guarantee both accuracy and privacy. Different from existing FL paradigm, under FPPDL, each participant receives a different version of the FL model with performance commensurate with his contributions. Experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate that FPPDL balances fairness, privacy and accuracy. It enables federated learning ecosystems to detect and isolate low-contribution parties, thereby promoting responsible participation.
A preprint of the paper is available here.
Mental Models 4 Life 