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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2024
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08868 |
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| _version_ | 1866916766701060096 |
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| author | McMahan, H. Brendan Xu, Zheng Zhang, Yanxiang |
| author_facet | McMahan, H. Brendan Xu, Zheng Zhang, Yanxiang |
| contents | The state-of-the-art for training on-device language models for mobile keyboard applications combines federated learning (FL) with differential privacy (DP) via the DP-Follow-the-Regularized-Leader (DP-FTRL) algorithm. Two variants of DP-FTRL are used in practice, tree aggregation and matrix factorization. However, tree aggregation suffers from significantly suboptimal privacy/utility tradeoffs, while matrix mechanisms require expensive optimization parameterized by hard-to-estimate-in-advance constants, and high runtime memory costs. This paper extends the recently introduced Buffered Linear Toeplitz (BLT) mechanism to multi-participation scenarios. Our BLT-DP-FTRL maintains the ease-of-use advantages of tree aggregation, while essentially matching matrix factorization in terms of utility and privacy. We evaluate BLT-DP-FTRL on the StackOverflow dataset, serving as a re-producible simulation benchmark, and across four on-device language model tasks in a production FL system. Our empirical results highlight the advantages of the BLT mechanism and elevate the practicality and effectiveness of DP in real-world scenarios. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_08868 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | A Hassle-free Algorithm for Private Learning in Practice: Don't Use Tree Aggregation, Use BLTs McMahan, H. Brendan Xu, Zheng Zhang, Yanxiang Machine Learning The state-of-the-art for training on-device language models for mobile keyboard applications combines federated learning (FL) with differential privacy (DP) via the DP-Follow-the-Regularized-Leader (DP-FTRL) algorithm. Two variants of DP-FTRL are used in practice, tree aggregation and matrix factorization. However, tree aggregation suffers from significantly suboptimal privacy/utility tradeoffs, while matrix mechanisms require expensive optimization parameterized by hard-to-estimate-in-advance constants, and high runtime memory costs. This paper extends the recently introduced Buffered Linear Toeplitz (BLT) mechanism to multi-participation scenarios. Our BLT-DP-FTRL maintains the ease-of-use advantages of tree aggregation, while essentially matching matrix factorization in terms of utility and privacy. We evaluate BLT-DP-FTRL on the StackOverflow dataset, serving as a re-producible simulation benchmark, and across four on-device language model tasks in a production FL system. Our empirical results highlight the advantages of the BLT mechanism and elevate the practicality and effectiveness of DP in real-world scenarios. |
| title | A Hassle-free Algorithm for Private Learning in Practice: Don't Use Tree Aggregation, Use BLTs |
| topic | Machine Learning |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08868 |