We’re thrilled to announce that OpenMined, in collaboration with DeepMind, has been named one of the winners in the first phase of the UK-US Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) Prize Challenges. This recognition highlights our commitment to advancing privacy technologies that enable AI models to be trained on sensitive data without organizations having to reveal, share, or combine their raw data.
About the PETs Prize Challenges
The UK-US PETs Prize Challenges represent a groundbreaking international collaboration to accelerate the development and adoption of privacy-enhancing technologies. With a combined prize pool of $1.6 million (£1.3 million), the challenges focus on two critical tracks:
- Using PETs to improve the detection of financial crime
- Forecasting an individual’s risk of infection during a pandemic
The competition attracted 76 entries from across the globe, with 12 winners selected in the first phase. OpenMined and DeepMind were among the nine organizations from the UK that received recognition, alongside three US-based teams.
The Importance of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies
As noted by Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Laurie E. Locascio, “AI is driving rapid technology change that is based on ever-increasing amounts of disparate data, making privacy-enhancing technologies increasingly important.” The challenge provides a global venue to build and showcase cutting-edge and scalable solutions that respect human rights and civil liberties.
Privacy-enhancing technologies have the potential to transform how we address major societal challenges – from combating international money laundering to responding effectively to global pandemics – while maintaining robust privacy protections for individuals.
Next Steps in the Competition
Having successfully completed the first phase, which involved submitting white papers describing our approach to privacy-preserving data analytics, we’re now in the second phase of the competition. This phase, which began in October 2022, involves building the actual solutions outlined in our white paper.
Participants have opportunities to engage with regulators and government agencies for guidance on developing solutions that uphold crucial regulatory principles. In the third phase of the prize challenge, “red teams” will launch privacy attacks on the most promising solutions to rigorously test their privacy-preserving capacities and assess the final winners.
Global Recognition
Winning solutions from the challenge will be showcased at the second Summit for Democracy, which President Joe Biden plans to convene in 2023. This provides an exceptional opportunity to demonstrate how privacy-preserving technology can support democratic values while enabling innovation.
Minister of State for Media, Data, and Digital Infrastructure Julia Lopez at the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport emphasized that these technologies can “unlock the power of data to tackle major societal challenges…in a way that respects citizens’ rights.”
OpenMined’s Commitment to Privacy Tech
This recognition reinforces OpenMined’s position at the forefront of developing privacy technologies that can transform how organizations collaborate on sensitive data. We’re excited to continue developing our solution in the next phases of the competition and to showcase how privacy-enhancing technologies can create a future where data can be used for public good without compromising individual privacy.
This blog post references information from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) news release, “Winners Announced in First Phase of UK-US Privacy-Enhancing Technologies Prize Challenges,” published on November 10, 2022.
