On Differentially Private Federated Linear Contextual Bandits

Published: 19 Jun 2023, Last Modified: 21 Jul 2023FL-ICML 2023EveryoneRevisionsBibTeX
Keywords: linear contextual bandits, federated learning, differential privacy
TL;DR: Identify the fundamental gaps in state-of-the-art and propose a generic framework to not only fix them but achieve improved results
Abstract: We consider cross-silo federated linear contextual bandit (LCB) problem under differential privacy, where multiple silos (agents) interact with the local users and communicate via a central server to realize collaboration while without sacrificing each user's privacy. We identify three issues in the state-of-the-art: (i) failure of claimed privacy protection and (ii) incorrect regret bound due to noise miscalculation and (iii) ungrounded communication cost. To resolve these issues, we take a two-step principled approach. First, we design an algorithmic framework consisting of a generic federated LCB algorithm and flexible privacy protocols. Then, leveraging the proposed framework, we study federated LCBs under two different privacy constraints. Specifically, we first establish performance guarantees under silo-level local differential privacy, which fix the issues present in state-of-the-art algorithm. To further improve the regret performance, we next consider shuffle model of differential privacy, under which we show that our algorithm can achieve nearly ``optimal'' regret without a trusted central server.
Submission Number: 53
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