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Google is making private AI practical with homomorphic encryption

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21–30 of 305 posts

Re: Google is making private AI practical with homomorphic encryption

#21
post #6

Does this rely on the Trust Me Bro model, or is there some way for the client to verify that the provider actually isn't able to see your inputs? I want to read a whitepaper but all I can find is the tl;dw conference presentation

Related, I'd seen this blog [0] posted on HN a few years back that gave a nice run down on the "programmable cryptography" space which introduce FHE and a few other neat concepts. Really enjoyed the read and learned some new terms.

[0] https://0xparc.org/blog/programmable-cryptography-1

Re: Google is making private AI practical with homomorphic encryption

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's google. They are good at engineering. Not at creating trust. After the bizillionth time they have broken trust, there is no need for benefit of the doubt.

so what's the option ??? Meta ?? xAi ?? or OpenAI ???

Why should there by any reason to look at the above ones? We are talking about this B2C company which effects a lot of our lives. The discussion isn't about that or this. The discussion is about JUST this specific company.

Re: Google is making private AI practical with homomorphic encryption

#24

One flaw with FHE is that it guarantees only that you need the key to see the inputs or outputs of the computation, but not necessarily that the computation is the one you want. For example, the computation could be adversarial for certain inputs, or an adversary could insert their own computation first (or last).

100% not an expert but my understanding was that part of what you are proving by signing the computation is that the computation itself was performed specifically as agreed to. I may be mixing this up with zero knowledge proofs.

If this were the case it would be necessary to send the entire model weights in response to every request which would be a bit inconvenient.

Re: Google is making private AI practical with homomorphic encryption

#25
Correct. I appreciate the theoretical technology here, but I believe a great deal of harm is done by the fact that people are not likely to understand exactly what this means.

Which is to say, I believe that google is strongly implying the falsehood of "no one at Google can read your stuff."

Re: Google is making private AI practical with homomorphic encryption

#28
post #18

Encryption or not, if it's on somebody else's server, it isn't yours. I don't believe Google has my best interest.

This kind of attitude is really disrespectful of decades of progress in cryptography. Without even considering homomorphic encryption, classic encryption is specifically designed to make intermediate nodes such as ISP dumb pipes that do not know the contents of communication. The ISP can store your communications on their server however they want. If you don’t agree with this model, I’m afraid modern cryptography doe…

Even if your files are properly encrypted, if you keep them on, say, Google Drive, then you might lose access to them if your account gets inadvertently blocked.

I think GP is trying to say something along those lines. Not that encryption isn't trustworthy, but that even with homomorphic encryption you still give up autonomy.

Re: Google is making private AI practical with homomorphic encryption

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's google. They are good at engineering. Not at creating trust. After the bizillionth time they have broken trust, there is no need for benefit of the doubt.

so what's the option ??? Meta ?? xAi ?? or OpenAI ???

[deleted]

Re: Google is making private AI practical with homomorphic encryption

#30
post #15

Proper encryption means the ciphertext is indistinguishable from noise. So...in order to be able to process on it, you have to make it not indistinguishable from noise. So I take offense to the term FHE. It's a oxymoron. The whole thing immidiatly stands out as a sham to build trust where it's gone.

No, that’s not what proper encryption means. Security for encryption means that cipher texts encrypting distinct messages are indistinguishable. This is called IND-CPA, and FHE satisfies this.
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