Machine Unlearning

How does Hirundo make an AI model forget?

By
Nicole Levin
August 20, 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized numerous industries, offering unprecedented advancements and efficiencies. However, like every technological revolution, AI comes with its own set of challenges, particularly concerning data privacy and compliance. This is where Hirundo, the first machine unlearning platform, steps in, providing a groundbreaking solution to these pressing issues.

The Need for Machine Unlearning

Hirundo is designed to address a critical flaw in AI systems: the inability to forget data once it has been learned. Traditional AI models are excellent at absorbing information, but they struggle with the concept of unlearning. This becomes problematic when models inadvertently retain sensitive information, such as personal data, copyrighted content, or even poisoned data that could compromise their integrity and security.

AI models often retain information they shouldn't, including personal, copyrighted, confidential, and potentially harmful data. This raises significant privacy and security concerns.

Ensuring Compliance and Ethical Standards

The need for machine unlearning is evident in various scenarios. For instance, enterprises developing customer support chatbots might inadvertently train their models on data that includes personal emails, IDs, or geolocation information. Such data retention not only poses ethical concerns but also risks non-compliance with stringent regulations like the EU AI Act and GDPR. According to a Stanford research study, a significant percentage of foundational models currently used are non-compliant with these regulations, exposing companies to potential fines and legal issues.

Traditional guardrails for AI models are insufficient to prevent data leaks and protect sensitive information, as demonstrated by recent incidents involving major AI systems.

Hirundo’s Innovative Approach

Hirundo's machine unlearning platform provides a powerful solution to these challenges. Unlike traditional guardrails that merely filter inputs and outputs, Hirundo's approach effectively removes unwanted data from AI models. This deep forgetting process ensures that sensitive information is thoroughly erased, making the models compliant and secure. Hirundo's platform is versatile and capable of unlearning data across various types of models, including large language models (LLMs), computer vision, and tabular data.

Hirundo's innovative machine unlearning approach combines parameter unlearning and data-influence unlearning to selectively remove unwanted information from large language models (LLMs) while maintaining overall model performance.

Efficiency and Environmental Benefits

One of the key advantages of Hirundo's solution is its efficiency. Traditional methods of retraining or fine-tuning models to forget specific data are time-consuming and resource-intensive. They require significant GPU power and new hyper-parameter optimization, making them impractical for frequent use. In contrast, Hirundo's unlearning process is up to 30 times faster and uses less than 5% of the GPU resources required by traditional methods. This not only reduces costs but also minimizes the carbon footprint, making it an environmentally friendly option.

Advanced Unlearning Techniques

Hirundo employs two main methods for unlearning: parameter unlearning and data-influence unlearning. Parameter unlearning involves identifying and adjusting the specific parameters where the unwanted data is stored, akin to performing precise brain surgery on the model. Data-influence unlearning, on the other hand, focuses on degrading the model's perception of the data to be forgotten and reinforcing the importance of the remaining data. Both methods ensure that the model forgets the unwanted information while maintaining its overall functionality and accuracy.

Hirundo's Machine Unlearning Platform offers a comprehensive solution for selectively removing unwanted data from various AI models, including tabular data, computer vision, natural language processing, and large language models.

Practical Benefits for Organizations

The practical benefits of Hirundo's platform extend to various stakeholders within an organization. For AI and ML teams, the ability to quickly and efficiently remove biased, outdated, or inaccurate data improves model outputs and accelerates experimentation. Compliance officers and Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) benefit from the platform's ability to ensure GDPR compliance, remove AI vulnerabilities, and keep models aligned with data policies.

Real-World Applications and Success

Real-world applications of Hirundo's machine unlearning have demonstrated its effectiveness. In one instance, the platform was used to make an LLM forget personal data in just a few minutes—a task that would have taken hours or even days with traditional fine-tuning methods. This rapid unlearning capability is crucial in dynamic environments where data privacy requests are frequent and urgent.

Demonstration of Hirundo's unlearning technology: Before unlearning, the LLM reveals personal data. After unlearning, the model no longer discloses the sensitive information, instead producing a generic response.

A Comprehensive Solution for Ethical AI

Hirundo's machine unlearning platform is not just a tool but a comprehensive solution that aligns with the evolving regulatory landscape and the increasing demand for ethical AI practices. As regulations tighten and user awareness grows, the ability to unlearn data will become a standard requirement for AI systems. Hirundo is poised to lead this change, offering a scalable, efficient, and effective way to ensure that AI models can forget as well as they learn.

Join the Future of Ethical AI

For organizations looking to stay ahead in the AI revolution while maintaining compliance and ethical standards, Hirundo provides the only practical alternative to retraining. By integrating advanced unlearning capabilities, Hirundo ensures that AI systems remain secure, compliant, and aligned with the highest standards of data integrity.

Join the future of ethical AI with Hirundo, where forgetting is just as powerful as learning.

Nicole Levin
Content Manager & BDR

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