Chinese digital bank WeBank announced on Wednesday it has formed new partnerships with cloud computing platform Tencent Cloud and deep learning research Mila. According to WeBank, the partnerships will seek to protect data privacy while enabling cross-organization collaborations in both AI and fintech, which is powered by the new federated learning (FL) technology. WeBank observed:
“Currently, data silos and privacy protection are two big challenges for AI. As an encrypted distributed machine learning framework, FL can tackle both problems by allowing different parties to build models collaboratively without the need to reveal their data. The method helps to advance AI modeling while protecting data and privacy.”
Professor Qiang Yang, Chief AI Officer at WeBank, further explained that large-scale AI application relies on big data, which is scattered across many different organizations.
“Direct data merging will violate privacy regulations. FL is a compliance method strictly following laws and regulations, and is now used in fintech, healthcare, smart city, and other industrial applications.”
WeBank also noted that signing partners WeBank and Tencent Cloud had established a joint lab dedicated to FL and fintech back in March. The two parties will work together to develop in AI areas, on top of setting industry standards and making commercial applications.