Humans have already demonstrated the ability to create some seriously secure encryption algorithms, but that wasn't enough for the Google Brain team. So, instead of relying on those soft, mushy human brains, Google engineers decided to let a trio of AI minds put their own encryption skills to the test. Starting with three different AIs named Alice, Bob, and Eve, Google gave specific goals to each: Alice was tasked with sending Bob a message, and it was Eve's job to intercept and decode it. Both Alice and Bob were given matching keys with which to encode and decode their conversation, while Eve had to attempt to translate the encrypted message into plaintext without the key. At first, neither of the AI recipients were able to successfully decode the message with any degree of reliability, but soon Bob cracked the code with the help of his key.

Computing Microsoft and Google Want to Let Artificial Intelligence Loose on Our Most Private Data New ways to use machine learning without risking sensitive data could unlock new ideas in industries like health care and finance. April 19, 2016 Sponsored by The recent emergence of a powerful machine-learning technique known as deep learning has made computing giants such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft even hungrier for data. It's what lets software learn to do things like recognize images or understand language. Yet many problems where deep learning could be most valuable involve data that is hard to come by or is held by organizations that are unwilling to share it. And as Apple CEO Tim Cook puts it, some consumers are already concerned about companies "gobbling up" their personal information.

The recent emergence of a powerful machine-learning technique known as deep learning has made computing giants such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft even hungrier for data. It's what lets software learn to do things like recognize images or understand language. Yet many problems where deep learning could be most valuable involve data that is hard to come by or is held by organizations that are unwilling to share it. And as Apple CEO Tim Cook puts it, some consumers are already concerned about companies "gobbling up" their personal information. "A lot of people who hold sensitive data sets like medical images are just not going to share them for legal and regulatory concerns," says Vitaly Shmatikov, a professor at Cornell Tech who studies privacy.

The recent emergence of a powerful machine-learning technique known as deep learning has made computing giants such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft even hungrier for data. It's what lets software learn to do things like recognize images or understand language. Yet many problems where deep learning could be most valuable involve data that is hard to come by or is held by organizations that are unwilling to share it. And as Apple CEO Tim Cook puts it, some consumers are already concerned about companies "gobbling up" their personal information. "A lot of people who hold sensitive data sets like medical images are just not going to share them for legal and regulatory concerns," says Vitaly Shmatikov, a professor at Cornell Tech who studies privacy.