back to article Good luck deleting someone's private info from a trained neural network – it's likely to bork the whole thing

AI systems have weird memories. The machines desperately cling onto the data they’ve been trained on, making it difficult to delete bits of it. In fact, they often have to be completely retrained from scratch with the newer, smaller dataset. That’s no good in an age where individuals can request their personal data be removed …

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      1. I.Geller Bronze badge

        Now do you understand why I couldn't get any support from the Government? Why have I struggled for 10 years? I suggested AI to be owned by us, not by third parties like the CIA (Google and FB). But the state, in the face of its Almighty agencies, is not interested in our privacy and I did not get any funding.

        Fortunately, we live in the country of bestial capitalism and someone will surely start selling AI with a privacy option, given our desire to have our lives protected from invasion and pay for this. That's what I hope to.

  1. Daedalus

    May I suggest...

    ...that the operation to remove the data be termed a "loborkomy".

  2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Manna Mania ......... Is such a condition recognised for discovery to uncover?

    Researchers show limited success in getting rid of data

    Data holders would then be assured liable for compensation? And 24/7/365 Private Personal Protection if gospel info or damning data is in any way indicative of Juicy Lucy, Virgin Soldiers type Interests/Crazy Fascinations/Almighty Operations ‽ .

    Making the Simple Unavoidable Assumption, Nothing is Able to be Kept Secret, Shifts the GeoPolitical Power Play Fields to those Sharing the Powers and Strengths in Consortia Keeping Secrets Safe and Secure and Secret ...... as far as that is ever able to be enabled. ...... and those Simply Sharing Sensitive Information Outing Further Speculations on Realisations Registered Free-Lancing Willy Nilly :-)

    If you Understand that Drivers the Operations of the Future, Being Prepared for All Information and Intelligence to be Shared rather than Secreted, Transforms and Transfers the Stage to Bring COSMIC Light ......... SMARTR Enlightenment. :-)

    After all, it is not as if all information has not been made very easily searchable and researchable. To imagine that viewers/readers/listeners would not become much more intelligent, surprisingly quickly, is a Core System Fault. Just ask Bill and the Boys at Microsoft. It's a BloodBath of AIdDisaster.

    This communication was made possible thanks to JLAIP :-) Echt waar. I Kid U Not

    1. ArrZarr Silver badge

      Re: Manna Mania ......... Is such a condition recognised for discovery to uncover?

      On the note of AIs, you know how feeding an AI good literature to train one to write prose gives bad results?

      I wonder what would happen if we gave them your posts.

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: Manna Mania ......... Is such a condition recognised for discovery to uncover?

        On the note of AIs, you know how feeding an AI good literature to train one to write prose gives bad results?.... ArrZarr

        Have you considered IT and AI can give all results, ArrZarr. ...... Good and Bad.

        Which would you Prefer for Real? That's a No Brainer for New Brains. Good always Win Wins and Bad always Fails Spectacular with Massive Falls from Grace with Catastrophic Cuts to Leading Driver Credibility and Capability.

        To Think to Lead with a Bad Result Plan is Surely Kith and Kin to an ACT of High Treason Against Global Operating Devices.

        J'accuse.

  3. Nifty

    Well... for deletion of human memories, progress has been made:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/scientists-have-discovered-how-to-delete-unwanted-memories/

    That might point to ways. Next up: Can skills and ability to recognise things be selectively deleted?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      seems to work

      I mean, *I* can still recognise traits no one sane would want in a world leader, but something's happened to the rest of the world. It must be something in the environment / radishes* / celery*. I mean, 'no, we don't want nuclear power because that won't ruin the atmosphere and my friend's friend who secretly advises the gas industry says its scary' , 'lets' vote for Boris / Trump / etc because I wouldn't trust them with anything more dangerous than a sinclair c5'

      *) Unfit for this human's consumption, hence I'm immune

    2. Loyal Commenter Silver badge
      Alert

      Pretty sure we've been able to delete human memories for decades

      ...either by the application of voltages across the temples (ECT), or, more drastically, through leukotomy / lobotomy. It;s just that you don't necessarily get to decide which memories get deleted, or how well.

    3. Daedalus

      Induction of Psychoneurosis by Conditioned Reflex under strESS

      1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

        Harry, is that you?

      2. defiler

        Hang on - I've got a file on that here.

  4. g00se2
    Stop

    Even more important than the ability to delete data is an algorithmic audit trail. It should be possible to have a complete log of the full decision tree in order to ascertain that decisions affecting people in the real world have been arrived at reasonably. In fact there should be a standard to which all 'AI' systems must be held.

    1. Charlie van Becelaere

      Good luck with that. I agree there ought to be such an audit trail to any AI training, but I don't think the folks involved really know enough about what's going on inside their processes to manage anything remotely useful.

      Black boxes seem to be equally opaque to all concerned.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Better to...

    ....bork it than borg it

  6. JohnFen

    Another great reason

    This is yet another great reason to do everything possible to avoid having our data collected in the first place.

  7. I.Geller Bronze badge

    What a stupid idea! To train date on another date! Why not instead to train it on dictionary? Does training date on another date mean creating of a new dictionary? So why waste energy, money and time creating a new dictionary when there is already a well-established old one?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How do you unlearn P0rn?

    Is it even possible?

  9. I.Geller Bronze badge

    saving millions

    Dictionary is a book or electronic resource that lists the words of a language (typically in alphabetical order) and gives their meaning, or gives the equivalent words in a different language, often also providing information about pronunciation, origin, and usage.

    Training your date on dictionary you get a ready-made index, plus you get a huge number of patterns that explain the meaning of the used by you words. Instead of many gigabytes of texts you can use only 20-26 megabytes, saving millions.

  10. I.Geller Bronze badge

    The AI database is a blockchain database, that is

    - long-ago use of information

    - and the presence of rarely used templates

    can result into automatic deletion of information.

  11. Mihai

    My 1.5 cents

    Imagine a neural network trained on 1000 identical data points.

    Deleting the result of 1 data point is fairly easy - the algorithm will likely decide nothing is impacted and the network will remain the same.

    So handling 1000 separate requests for deletion will leave the network as it is although the whole input dataset should have been removed.

    Have a feeling that this encourages the “grab all and see later” approach.

    Google will laugh all the way to the bank showing you that all deletion requests have been fulfilled...

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