# GECKO: Reconciling Privacy, Accuracy and Efficiency in Embedded Deep Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.00912 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.00912/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 2 Oct 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [SHAPr: An Efficient and Versatile Membership Privacy Risk Metric for Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02230/) (2021)
- [SoK: Unintended Interactions among Machine Learning Defenses and Risks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04542/) (2023)
- [Dikaios: Privacy Auditing of Algorithmic Fairness via Attribute Inference Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02242/) (2022)
- [Shielding Federated Learning Systems against Inference Attacks with ARM TrustZone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.05895/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Embedded systems demand on-device processing of data using Neural Networks (NNs) while conforming to the memory, power and computation constraints, leading to an efficiency and accuracy tradeoff. To bring NNs to edge devices, several optimizations such as model compression through pruning, quantization, and off-the-shelf architectures with efficient design have been extensively adopted. These algorithms when deployed to real world sensitive applications, requires to resist inference attacks to protect privacy of users training data. However, resistance against inference attacks is not accounted for designing NN models for IoT. In this work, we analyse the three-dimensional privacy-accuracy-efficiency tradeoff in NNs for IoT devices and propose Gecko training methodology where we explicitly add resistance to private inferences as a design objective. We optimize the inference-time memory, computation, and power constraints of embedded devices as a criterion for designing NN architecture while also preserving privacy. We choose quantization as design choice for highly efficient and private models. This choice is driven by the observation that compressed models leak more information compared to baseline models while off-the-shelf efficient architectures indicate poor efficiency and privacy tradeoff. We show that models trained using Gecko methodology are comparable to prior defences against black-box membership attacks in terms of accuracy and privacy while providing efficiency.