Google's DeepMind has a plan for protecting private health data--from itself

As part of its projects with Britain's National Health Service, Google's artificial intelligence unit DeepMind announced last week it's developing a new way to protect confidential health data--from itself. Its problem: How to assure hospitals, and the public at large, that patient confidentiality isn't compromised as it processes the sensitive medical health records entrusted to it. DeepMind's proposed solution is to create an indelible data log that can't be tampered with. It would show when a piece of data was used, and for what purpose. Importantly, DeepMind itself wouldn't be able to modify logs to use the data nefariously.