The governments of the United State and the United Kingdom have jointly launched a series of prize challenges, hoping to spur development of technologies that allow artificial intelligence models to be trained on sensitive data without having access to the actual, raw data that would compromise individual privacy.
There are two tracks in the series, which offers a combined prize pool of $1.6 million: One focused on predicting an individual’s risk of infection during a pandemic, and another to improve detection of financial crime — specifically, international money laundering. Participants can design specific tools for each, or a broadly applicable solution that works for both scenarios.
First announced at the Summit for Democracy last year, the competing AI models will be showcased at the second such summit, which is expected to be convened by President Joe Biden in the first half of 2023. In the U.S., the challenge is being funded and administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and led by NIST and the White House Office of Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The two governments said in a release that international money laundering costs up to $2 trillion each year, by U.N. figures, and the money-laundering detection track is aimed at preserving individual privacy while at the same time flagging unusual payments. Participants will be able to work with financial regulators from both countries and will have access to synthetic, but realistic, global transaction data created by secure financial messaging provider SWIFT.
According to a White House statement, the pandemic response track will “strengthen global readiness for ongoing and future public health emergencies by developing privacy-preserving solutions that can forecast an individual’s risk of infection.” Developers in this track will also have access to an artificial data set, this one from the University of Virginia’s Biocomplexity Institute, which is described as representing “a digital twin of a regional population.” In this track, staff from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NHS England, and Data and Analytics Research Environments U.K. will engage with prize participants.
“Building on decades of NSF research investment in the field, these prize challenges will accelerate the translation of game-changing privacy-enhancing technologies,” said Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the NSF. “In this way, these prize challenges – supported by NSF’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering and the new Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships – illustrate the synergy of foundational research and translational activities in moving research to practice. By harnessing innovation across national lines and strengthening a transatlantic community of innovation, the U.S.-U.K. prize challenges will demonstrate the value of international collaboration to develop technologies in ways that uphold our shared values.”
“We are on the cusp of solving some of the world’s most intractable problems and improving our quality of life with the power of artificial intelligence, but we must do it responsibly by upholding our shared values around privacy,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
Nadine Dorries, secretary of state for the U.K. Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, said that the technologies involved in the challenges “can help us to harness the power of data to tackle global challenges like international money laundering and to plan for subsequent public health emergencies, while respecting citizens’ rights. This partnership demonstrates the U.K. and U.S. commitment to working together to address transnational challenges, as well as to ensuring that our vision of the tech revolution – one that is open and democratic – prevails.”
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