>>/129779/ >>/129780/ >>/129781/ cont... Christchurch Call What is being developed? Software infrastructure is being built which will integrate a new set of privacy enhancing technologies (PETs). This will enable data scientists to remotely study data and algorithms distributed across multiple secure sites. Technologies including remote execution, federated learning, differential privacy, and secure multi-party computation will enable this remote research in a way that conforms to the data-use policies of the platform under study. The current project plan envisages work taking place approximately over a 9-month timeframe with a total cost of approximately US$1.5m. In brief these milestones are to: Build the underlying software and systems for the new infrastructure. Do a proof of concept test using synthetic data to show that the system works. Trusted partner(s) test out the system on real datasets, showing reproducibility and proof of function. What is each partner contributing? New Zealand is providing a financial contribution and assistance with establishing the initiative. New Zealand will also provide coordination between the Call Community and the project to ensure transparency, visibility, and that opportunities are maximised for Call supporters and partners to make use of the project’s output. The support of New Zealand and the USA will help to ensure the project outcomes are developed on behalf of the wider Call Community and will be tested for different types of online service provider. Twitter‘s ML Ethics, Transparency and Accountability team will be providing the proof-of-concept for the PET’s infrastructure. At the conclusion of Phase 1, trusted partners will be able to securely access and replicate the findings of our Algorithmic amplification paper published last year. Enabling secure access to this data is a milestone in data transparency and security. Microsoft is providing financial support to the initiative and is exploring options to enable the initiative to be tested on a different platform. How can I be involved? As part of the project, OpenMined will provide periodic briefings for the Call Community about its work, and an opportunity to discuss its potential applications. In subsequent phases of this work, there will be scope for other online service providers who want to test the capabilities of the new tool on their system, and for Call supporters who wish to help finance the development and testing of new functions and capabilities. We envisage that these tools will take some time to build, test, validate, and refine. In the long term they hope to create significant new opportunities for independent researcher involvement and the application of these tools across the Call Community and beyond it. If the pilot is successful, what are the next steps? If successful, the pilot will prove that the underlying techniques can be scaled to meet real-world legal, policy and other requirements. Subsequent phases could focus on additional testing, moving towards building a production-ready system to enable use for a wide range of objectives by a wide range of independent researchers. https://www.christchurchcall.com/media-and-resources/news-and-updates/christchurch-call-initiative-on-algorithmic-outcomes/