Abstract

In our days, decentralized computing is a marked trend. Beyond its advantages in terms of scalability and fault tolerance, it is better adapted than centralized computation to ethical constraints, including security and privacy preservation. Yet, the autonomy of participants raises the issue of how to motivate them to follow protocols as prescribed. I will sketch an approach based on coutility to make ethical behavior the rational choice of participants. Next, I will describe some applications of this approach to problems in decentralized computing and decentralized machine learning.

Bio

Josep Domingo-Ferrer is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and an ICREA-Acadèmia Research Professor at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Catalonia. He is the founder and the director of CYBERCAT-Center for Cybersecurity Research of Catalonia. He also founded and led the UNESCO Chair in Data Privacy. He is an associated researcher at the VP-IP Chair of Institut Mines-Télécom, Paris, France.

His research interests include security and privacy technologies, and in particular, anonymization/statistical disclosure control, anti-discrimination in machine learning and data mining, and cryptography. More generally, he is interested in ethics by design in information technology.

He is an IEEE Fellow, an ACM Distinguished Scientist and an Elected Member of Academia Europaea and the International Statistical Institute. He has received several research awards.