From confidential computing to confidential AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has grown from a passing trend into an important tool. Three-quarters of organizations now use it to boost innovation, efficiency, and growth. By 2026, analysts project that 80% of enterprises will use AI-enabled applications, transforming industries across the board.

The marketing and advertising sector is the leading industry using AI to gain a competitive advantage. As people use AI more frequently and train it on sensitive business and personal data, an important question arises. How can we use this powerful AI technology while keeping data confidential?

Why Confidentiality Matters in AI

As AI becomes more deeply integrated into business operations, ensuring confidentiality takes on critical importance.

  • One of the primary concerns revolves around data collection: personal information is often used to train AI without people knowing.
  • Beyond security, biases inherent in training data, often stemming from human bias, can lead to discriminatory outcomes. This raises questions about fairness and equity in AI-driven decisions.
  • Lastly, the lack of transparency in AI systems makes it difficult to understand how decisions are made, leading to concerns about accountability.

Keeping AI data private is not just about security. It is also about building trust and fairness in our automated world.

The Black Box Problem: Challenges in AI

Artificial Intelligence models, often viewed as a "black box” due to its opaque inner workings, raises several challenges. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to discern what’s happening inside.

The ability to clearly explain AI’s actions is critical, as users struggle to understand how and why decisions are made.

Privacy concerns make the issue worse. AI systems handle a lot of personal data. It is important to keep this information secure.

Additionally, data sovereignty has also to be a key consideration in the AI landscape. Uncertainty exists about who controls data and where it is stored, particularly when people deal with cross-border data flows.

The ethical factor adds another layer of complexity. As AI systems increasingly influence critical aspects of our lives, questions arise about whether these systems are upholding ethical standards, such as fairness and non-discrimination.

Security is obviously paramount; preventing breaches in an AI-driven world is a complex task that requires constant vigilance.

Lastly, the rising challenge of monetization is attractive for companies, which must balance profitability with the need to protect user privacy.

Confidential AI is designed to address these challenges and offers a comprehensive approach to solving the most pressing issues in AI today.

How Confidential AI Builds Trust and Keeps It

As AI continues to shape the future of technology, building and maintaining trust is essential. Confidential AI is key to building trust. It makes sure that every part of the AI process is secure, clear, and dependable. This includes data handling and decision-making.

Confidentiality of Data and Model

Confidential AI establishes trust by securing both data and the model. It starts with users encrypting data directly on their devices, ensuring privacy from the beginning.

Running the model inside a secure environment, such as a secure enclave, also secures the AI model. This protection from the enclave prevents anyone from viewing or tampering with the model or private data.

Confidentiality of The Inference

One key feature of Confidential AI is that it can process data without accessing the underlying information directly.

This means that Confidential AI can make inferences, draw conclusions and make decisions while keeping the data and models private. This approach not only safeguards sensitive information but also enhances trust in the AI’s operations.

Confidentiality of The Results

To further solidify trust, Confidential AI ensures that the AI model computations get performed honestly. The enclave ensures the program executes exactly as intended, without being altered or tampered.

Confidential AI with iExec

At iExec, our main technology is confidential computing. It ensures trust, traceability, and privacy. This keeps sensitive data safe during the whole process.

Through our blockchain-based platform using smart contracts and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), the iExec confidential computing enables stakeholders to define and record immutable rules on data (e.g. access, processing and policy) in smart contracts and Trusted Execution Environments to render them inviolable by default.

Blockchain: A Key Component of Confidential AI Security

While Confidential AI increases protection in the model, result and inference, integrating blockchain technology adds an additional layer of verifiability and trust. The iExec blockchain records key steps of the AI process, providing comprehensive traceability.

This transparency allows anyone to verify each contribution, increasing trust in the AI process. Users and stakeholders can trust the AI model's results. Every step of the process is recorded on the iExec blockchain. This makes the results verifiable and ensures accuracy and integrity.

Confidential AI Use Cases with iExec Technology

Building Confidential AI applications using iExec technology enables secure and private processing throughout the AI workflow.

The AI research team of iExec is developing several demonstration use cases aligned with this principle. One demo confidentially processing encrypted images and public descriptions to securely match them.

Another focuses on confidential image generation with encrypted prompts and provides encrypted results. A third demo introduces a confidential fine-tuning process with encrypted dataset.

More demos are being developed, and future articles will offer detailed insights into these changes.

Monetization to Balance Profit and Privacy

With iExec Confidential Computing, user data stays fully protected throughout the process. Users can also set custom rules, like pricing for access and usage.

Similarly, developers of DApps can easily monetize their applications, while ensuring the privacy of user data. This creates a seamless framework for monetizing AI applications while keeping data confidentiality.

So, what’s on the horizon for Confidential AI? The future looks promising, with advancements aimed at further enhancing security and trust. We see rapid developments in the field of Confidential AI such as Nvidia releasing their Confidential Computing powered GPUs.

As AI integrates deeply into various industries, companies must ensure data confidentiality more than ever. Confidential AI offers a promising solution, building trust through encryption, transparency, and advanced security measures. It addresses challenges like data privacy, ethical concerns, and monetization, while also tackling issues like data sovereignty and security breaches.

We are improving Confidential AI solutions, so future articles will look more closely at the demos. They will also explore their wider implications.