The governments of the United Kingdom and United States have announced the 12 finalists chosen during the first phase of their prize challenge for privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs). GMV has been named as one of this select group of companies based on submission of its uTile solution, which allows secure, private calculations to be performed on distributed data, with no need for the organizations involved to expose their data or transfer it to other locations. The solution developed by GMV can make use of confidential data to improve machine learning algorithms and analytical models, while complying at all times with an organization’s own requirements. It ensures that their data will remain private and that all pertinent legislation will be observed.

All participants in this prize competition are developing solutions that allow use of sensitive data to train artificial intelligence (AI) models, with no need for the organizations involved to disclose, share, or combine their raw data. It is expected that these solutions will have a positive impact by improving privacy and enhancing the trustworthiness of AI systems that respect human rights and civil liberties.

The winning solutions will be announced at the second Summit for Democracy, which President Joe Biden plans to convene in the first half of 2023. The prize challenge is funded and managed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and National Science Foundation (NSF).

The 12 finalist projects were selected from among 76 entries across two challenge tracks: using PETs to improve detection of financial crime and forecasting an individual’s risk of infection during a pandemic, or designing a solution that would meet both scenarios.

For the first stage of the competition, teams from academic institutions, global technology firms and privacy tech companies submitted white papers describing their approaches to privacy-preserving data analytics.

Prizes were awarded to the following organizations and teams:

• Corvus Research Limited
• Diagonal Works
• GMV
• Faculty
• Featurespace Limited
• OpenMined and DeepMind
• Privitar Limited
• University of Cambridge
• University of Liverpool
• “Team MusCAT” (Broad Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Business School, University of Texas Austin, University of Toronto)
• “Team IBM Research”
• “Team Secret Computers” (Inpher Inc.)