Today, the governments of the UK and the US launched a series of competitions with cash prizes to unlock the potential of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to address major social issues on a global scale.
Innovators from academia, business, and the general public will have the chance to participate in up to two distinct tracks (improving financial crime detection and predicting an individual’s risk of infection during a pandemic), as well as the choice to develop one generalised solution that works for both scenarios for wider applicability.
This opportunity was announced at the Summit for Democracy last year.
Innovators will create privacy-preserving federated learning solutions that allow artificial intelligence models to be trained on sensitive data without organisations having to reveal, share, or combine their raw data in order to compete for cash prizes from a combined UK-US prize pool of $1.6 million (£1.3 million).
The second Summit for Democracy, which President Biden intends to hold in the first half of 2023, will feature winning challenge solutions.
The first track, which aims to reinvent financial crime prevention, will inspire technology advancement to address the problem of global money laundering.
Money laundering costs up to $2 trillion annually, according to estimates from the United Nations (UN), hurting economic growth and funding organised crime.
PETs can be used to enable collaborative analytics and privacy-preserving financial information sharing, allowing abnormal payments to be discovered without jeopardising individual privacy.
Using synthetic global transaction data produced by SWIFT, a global provider of secure financial communications services, innovators will work.
Registered challengers will have access to data that is artificial yet realistic, preventing the disclosure of sensitive information.
The prize challenges will present opportunities for innovators to interact with regulators on both sides of the Atlantic, including the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), as well as the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, to provide regulatory context crucial for understanding the potential of these maturing technologies to counter illicit financial activity (FinCEN).
Also interacting with the UK National Economic Crime Centre will be innovators.
By creating privacy-preserving technologies that can predict an individual’s risk of infection, the second track of the challenges, which is intended to improve pandemic response skills, would increase global readiness for current and upcoming public health emergencies.
The Biocomplexity Institute at the University of Virginia has produced a synthetic dataset that gives researchers access to a digital twin of a local community.
The pandemic response dataset is artificial and will not disclose any private information, similar to the financial dataset.
Participants in the challenge will have the opportunity to interact with personnel from the UK Research and Innovation DARE UK (Data and Analytics Research Environments UK) initiative, NHS England, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The U.K. Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport’s Secretary of State, Nadine Dorries, said:
To hasten the adoption of privacy-enhancing technology, I’m thrilled that we are today announcing joint UK-US prize challenges (PETs).
These state-of-the-art tools can assist us in utilising data’s potential to address global issues like international money laundering and prepare for ensuing public health emergencies while upholding citizens’ rights.
This collaboration shows the UK and US’ dedication to working together to address global issues and to making sure that our vision of the tech revolution—one that is open and democratic—wins out.
The director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Dr. Alondra Nelson, said:
These competitions with cash prizes will inspire creativity and talent on both sides of the Atlantic to develop privacy-enhancing technological solutions and unleash their potential to address major global issues like pandemic preparedness and cross-border financial crime.
This significant project demonstrates our shared goal of advancing technology and innovation while reaffirming our dedication to and expression of democratic principles and the fundamental right to privacy.
The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Director, Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan, stated:
These reward challenges will hasten the translation of revolutionary privacy-enhancing technology, building on decades of NSF research support in the area.
These prize competitions, which are sponsored by the NSF’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering and the new Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, serve as an example of the synergy between basic science and translational initiatives in advancing knowledge into practise.
The US-UK prize challenges will show the benefits of international collaboration to build technologies in ways that maintain our shared values by harnessing invention across national boundaries and strengthening a transatlantic community of innovation.
American Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo stated:
With the potential of artificial intelligence, we are poised to solve some of the most intractable issues in the world and improve our quality of life, but we must act responsibly by preserving our common values about privacy,
I’m excited that we’re announcing these joint UK-US privacy-enhancing technology award competitions and inspiring our top academic and industrial researchers to develop novel privacy-protecting technologies so that we can all benefit.
UK Information Commissioner John Edwards stated:
By including the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at the outset of these award challenges, it is certain that the design process will put people’s privacy and confidence first.
People can have faith in the ability of personal data to prevent financial crime and save lives.
When utilised properly, privacy-enhancing technologies enable incredible innovation.
We are eager to assist with these ideas and the end results that will ultimately benefit the public.
The U.S. White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the U.S. National Science Foundation are leading the planning for the challenges.
The U.K. Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) and Innovate UK are also involved (NSF).
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. National Science Foundation are responsible for funding and overseeing the U.S. challenge.