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> we never look at or train with real user data, unless explicitly donated What is the rationale behind this? Why not train?
by soheil 10y ago
> we never look at or train with real user data, unless explicitly donated
What is the rationale behind this? Why not train?
- perlgeek 10y agoCouldn't user data make it into the model, and be reverse-engineered from it, if you used it to train the model? I mean, machine learning models aren't designed as one-way cryptographic hash functions, so you can't be sure that some of the training data can be inferred through the model's behavior.
- zek 10y agoYes! there is an interesting paper on this subject: https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.02943 https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.02943
- j_s 10y agoCounterpoint: https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.04082 https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.04082 Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13824047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13824047
- gcr 10y agoPreserving users' privacy first and foremost is absolutely the right thing to do here. I'm really glad Dropbox is willing to trade away a bit of model accuracy for better user privacy.
- amelius 10y agoBecause the ML models might start reproducing snippets of user data.
- SmellTheGlove 10y agoI can answer this. I'm a paying Dropbox customer and I didn't donate my data. The information is mine, and we can discuss using it, but my expectation of privacy includes Dropbox not using it for any purpose that isn't storing and serving it to me unless I've expressly stated otherwise. While I'm not that interesting of a person, I do have an interest in things like my tax returns, financials, and other PII to not be in the hands of Dropbox employees. Short answer: Dropbox is doing the right thing, and I really appreciate that.
- metaobject 10y agoPerhaps they don't have the metadata for the data?