Summary
In this episode of Dr. Pawd, host Pieter Abbeel interviews Raluca Ada Popa, a leading researcher in computer security systems and applied cryptography and the co-founder of Prevail and Opaque Systems. The episode focuses on confidential computing and its applications across industries such as healthcare, finance, and advertising.
Confidential computing enables organizations to securely share and analyze sensitive data without risking privacy breaches or other security concerns by encrypting the data and only allowing access to authorized users. This process involves using hardware enclaves that have a way of checking what is running inside them and ensure that only authorized algorithms are running on the data within them.
Popa discusses the potential risks and challenges involved in implementing confidential computing, such as the need for secure policies and processes and the importance of ensuring that algorithms and training scripts do not expose sensitive information. She also talks about the benefits of open-source models in building successful companies, and her previous startup experience with Prevail, which provides email and file sharing encryption with compliance for regulations such as the defense sector CLMC ITAR.
Popa talks about the potential for re-encrypting data without ever having to decrypt it for security purposes, and the prediction for the use of confidential computing for securing data during the training of AI models. One of the challenges of implementing confidential computing is preventing models from remembering too much about individuals and learning unintended information. Popa introduces the concept of differential privacy and how it works by adding noise to the data to hide any specific user's information.
Popa also talks about her childhood, growing up in Romania, and her interest in math, physics, and computer science. She participated in olympiads in these subjects and found problem-solving in physics to be her biggest love. Popa's mother, who is also a software engineer, indirectly influenced her love for engineering and science by encouraging her to reason logically and derive solutions rather than memorize things.
The episode concludes with Popa sharing how her excitement for research problems with her extremely smart students drives her on a day-to-day basis. She believes that research needs to be applied and not just published in papers. Popa is specifically motivated by the potential of confidential computing, which can enable collaboration with sensitive data such as medical and financial information. She also encourages critical thinking and reasoning in parenting and enjoys spending time with her one-year-old daughter.
