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InstaHide Disappointingly Wins Bell Labs Prize, 2nd Place

nicholas.carlini.com

11–20 of 46 posts

Re: InstaHide Disappointingly Wins Bell Labs Prize, 2nd Place

#11
Sounds like the kind of show over substance and obfuscation to prevent review snake oil that all too often shows up in crypto-currency. At least in ML the author isn't likely to get swatted for being critical.

I'm not sure what it is about one-time-pads (and generalizations of OTP like shamir secret-sharing) that cause it to so reliably show up in unsound work. Something about these perfectly valid (in the right context) tools is very moth-to-flamey.

Re: InstaHide Disappointingly Wins Bell Labs Prize, 2nd Place

#13
post #5

If you enjoy reading Carlini tear into papers, also check out the following: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.08347.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.02322.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.03286.pdf He definitely doesn't mince words, but it's hard to be mad when he always makes very valid points. And I say that as a secondary author on one the criticized methods (not InstaHide).

Props to you for being so willing to accept thoughtful criticism. No matter how good the criticism is, that’s really hard.

Re: InstaHide Disappointingly Wins Bell Labs Prize, 2nd Place

#14

Not the most polite post, but I think this is necessary given that the authors continued to promote the scheme even after it was shown to be broken.

I thought it was perfectly polite and far more evenhanded than it needed to be. One could argue that the authors of the original paper and the bell labs judges were acting in a hostile fashion.

Re: InstaHide Disappointingly Wins Bell Labs Prize, 2nd Place

#16
It seems this award would have awarded anything as 2nd place, what if there was nothing else better? Does the award really tell you how great this is, or maybe it simply shows how little progress has been made.

Edit: And I completely agree with author about Paper in the field need to do better.

Re: InstaHide Disappointingly Wins Bell Labs Prize, 2nd Place

#17
post #3

The best(?) part of the article is this: > In the award ceramony [sic], the Bell Labs researcher presenting the award explicitly said he doesn't understand how InstaHide is secure, but, and I quote, “it works nonetheless”. No! It does not. Bell Labs used to have a wonderful reputation. Not so much anymore, I suppose.

[deleted]

Re: InstaHide Disappointingly Wins Bell Labs Prize, 2nd Place

#19
post #13
post #5

If you enjoy reading Carlini tear into papers, also check out the following: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.08347.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.02322.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.03286.pdf He definitely doesn't mince words, but it's hard to be mad when he always makes very valid points. And I say that as a secondary author on one the criticized methods (not InstaHide).

Props to you for being so willing to accept thoughtful criticism. No matter how good the criticism is, that’s really hard.

Thoughtful criticism is like having good feedback. It should not be hard to receive that. It starts becoming hard when there are ulterior motives or when the criticism actually isn’t valid but getting a lot of attention. Most constructive feedback is actually best shared in private as well.

Re: InstaHide Disappointingly Wins Bell Labs Prize, 2nd Place

#20

Well, that was a fairly comprehensive takedown. Kudos to the author for mentioning the things the primary author did well and correctly put the primary responsibility on the senior researchers. ML privacy isn't at all in my wheelhouse, but I did do computer security research in school. The author makes a good point that researchers need to be ready for their methods to be broken. More importantly though, researchers…

Bell Labs has already fallen long before, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal (Though I only read about it earlier this year in the book Soft Machines.) Well, at least they fired him after it became clear what was going on, but pretty sad for it to go on under their noses for so long beforehand. Like this article there's a lingering, if a bit different, question of what should be expected of co-authors.
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