The buzz around swarm learning: Here’s what you need to know

[Sorin_Cheran]

Want to learn more about swarm learning? Here’s a collection of informative content that takes you from definition to application.

Think of swarms of starlings buzzing around in the sky, or fish swimming likewise in the water. The word "swarm" was inspired by the fact that various creatures, often for their own protection, exhibit a kind of decentralized behavior unrelated to the movements of their flock leader. And that's the basis for the idea of swarm intelligence—which is at the heart of HPE’s new swarm learning concept.

Talking about swarm learning gets us here at HPE very excited. We developed this new technology as an alternative that can adapt to—and take advantage of—the increasingly distributed nature of data.

Inspired by biology, swarm learning is based on blockchain. And it’s designed to ensure that only legitimate participants join a decentralized learning network. This allows companies to leverage distributed data while protecting data privacy and security. Swarm learning achieves comparable accuracy to centralized learning but outperforms centralized learning in terms of not only security but also fault-tolerance and latency.

That’s a lot. To help unpack the concept, I’ve collected some resources to help you get up to speed on the subject.

Let’s start with this video that clearly and succinctly answers the question: What is swarm learning?

Dig deeper on swarm learning technology and business benefits

Swarm learning: Turn you distributed data into competitive edge

This technical paper details swarm learning technology and architecture. It also discusses ways to apply swarm learning—and how it can benefit your business. Use cases covered include healthcare, urban mobility, and deep space collaboration.

"With swarm learning, raw data never leaves the boundary of the data possessor and his location. Only insights from that data are shared between the nodes. The machine learning method is applied locally at the data source." 

– Dr. Eng Lim Goh, Senior Vice President and CTO for AI at HPE

Industry focus on autonomous driving and healthcare

Take a look at three more videos that illustrate direct applications of swarm learning.

First, meet the car of the future—that will not only require advanced technology within the vehicle itself, but also cutting-edge innovation to support how these cars share information as a fleet. Watch here.

Next, learn how HPE and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) is utilizing Swarm Learning to share health insights. Watch here.

And here’s one more video that talks about how artificial intelligence (AI) and swarm learning support clinical trials innovations, making research collaboration easier while continuing to meet compliance requirements areas. Watch here.

Swarm learning reading list

And here’s my compilation of a few articles that provide greater insights into swarm learning—what it is and what it helps accomplish.

A new age of data means embracing the edge

In this MIT Technology Review interview, Dr. Eng Lim Goh, Senior Vice President and CTO for AI at HPE, defines swarm learning and outlines the technologies behind it. He shares a use case showing how swarm learning can integrate sensitive medical data and share it without violating privacy law.

Harnessing the power of swarm learning

Here Dr. Goh discusses how swarm learning—and the shift from centralized data centers to edge computing—allows learnings to be shared without exposing data

Swarm learning for decentralized and confidential clinical machine learning

Published in Nature, this article illustrates the feasibility of using swarm learning to develop disease classifiers using distributed data. The focus is on four uses cases, including COVID-19, tuberculosis, leukemia, and lung pathologies.

From the short explanatory video to the technical paper, I hope that you found this information useful—and that now you’re as excited about the potential of swarm learning as I am. It’s taking us to yet another new frontier, where it’s possible to share insights in an agile and elegantly simple way without compromising data privacy. 

Looking for even more information on swarm learning? It’s all here: https://github.com/HewlettPackard/swarm-learning

Related articles: 

• How swarm learning enables data sharing while protecting data sovereignty via HPE's Enterprise.nxt
• What's all the buzz about swarm learning? via HPE's Enterprise.nxt
• HPE's Dr. Goh on harnessing the power of swarm learning via HPE's Enterprise.nxt
• Stay current on top tech trends and expert advice. Sign up for the weekly newsletter.

Sorin Cheran, PhD
HPE Fellow
VP, Artificial Intelligence Strategy and Solutions Group
Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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