Question 136 - Professional Machine Learning Engineer discussion

The best option for protecting sensitive customer data that might be used in the ML models is to coarsen the data by putting AGE into quantiles and rounding LATITUDE_LONGITUDE into single precision. This option has the following advantages:

It preserves the utility and relevance of the data for the ML models, as the coarsened data still captures the essential information and patterns that the models need to learn. For example, putting AGE into quantiles can group the customers into different age ranges, which can be useful for predicting their preferences or behavior. Rounding LATITUDE_LONGITUDE into single precision can reduce the precision of the location data, but still retain the general geographic region of the customers, which can be useful for personalizing the recommendations or offers.

It reduces the risk of exposing the personal or private information of the customers, as the coarsened data makes it harder to identify or re-identify the individual customers from the data. For example, putting AGE into quantiles can hide the exact age of the customers, which can be considered sensitive or confidential. Rounding LATITUDE_LONGITUDE into single precision can obscure the exact location of the customers, which can be considered sensitive or confidential.

The other options are less optimal for the following reasons:

Option A: Tokenizing all of the fields using hashed dummy values to replace the real values eliminates the utility and relevance of the data for the ML models, as the tokenized data loses all the information and patterns that the models need to learn. For example, tokenizing AGE using hashed dummy values can make the data meaningless and irrelevant, as the models cannot learn anything from the random tokens. Tokenizing LATITUDE_LONGITUDE using hashed dummy values can make the data meaningless and irrelevant, as the models cannot learn anything from the random tokens.

Option B: Using principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the four sensitive fields to one PCA vector reduces the utility and relevance of the data for the ML models, as the PCA vector may not capture all the information and patterns that the models need to learn. For example, using PCA to reduce AGE, IS_EXISTING_CUSTOMER, LATITUDE_LONGITUDE, and SHIRT_SIZE to one PCA vector can lose some information or introduce noise in the data, as the PCA vector is a linear combination of the original features, which may not reflect their true relationship or importance. Moreover, using PCA to reduce the four sensitive fields to one PCA vector may not reduce the risk of exposing the personal or private information of the customers, as the PCA vector may still be reversible or linkable to the original data, depending on the amount of variance explained by the PCA vector and the availability of the PCA transformation matrix.

Option D: Removing all sensitive data fields, and asking the data science team to build their models using non-sensitive data reduces the utility and relevance of the data for the ML models, as the non-sensitive data may not contain enough information and patterns that the models need to learn. For example, removing AGE, IS_EXISTING_CUSTOMER, LATITUDE_LONGITUDE, and SHIRT_SIZE from the data can make the data insufficient and unrepresentative, as the models may not be able to learn the factors that influence the customers' preferences or behavior. Moreover, removing all sensitive data fields from the data may not be necessary or feasible, as the data protection legislation may allow the use of sensitive data for the ML models, as long as the data is processed in a secure and ethical manner, and the customers' consent and rights are respected.

Protecting Sensitive Data and AI Models with Confidential Computing | NVIDIA Technical Blog

Training machine learning models from sensitive data | Fast Data Science

Securing ML applications. Model security and protection - Medium

Security of AI/ML systems, ML model security | Cossack Labs

Vulnerabilities, security and privacy for machine learning models