# A Theoretical Perspective on Differentially Private Federated Multi-task Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07179 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.07179/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 14 Nov 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [FedAUX: Leveraging Unlabeled Auxiliary Data in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02514/) (2021)
- [Private Multi-Task Learning: Formulation and Applications to Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.12978/) (2021)
- [CG-FedLLM: How to Compress Gradients in Federated Fune-tuning for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.13746/) (2024)
- [An Energy Consumption Model for Electrical Vehicle Networks via Extended Federated-learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.08472/) (2021)
- [A New Dimensionality Reduction Method Based on Hensel's Compression for Privacy Protection in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.02089/) (2022)
- [A Theoretical Analysis of Efficiency Constrained Utility-Privacy Bi-Objective Optimization in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16554/) (2023)
- [FedCoT: Communication-Efficient Federated Reasoning Enhancement for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10020/) (2025)
- [Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning with Differentially Private Hyperdimensional Computing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.01140/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In the era of big data, the need to expand the amount of data through data sharing to improve model performance has become increasingly compelling. As a result, effective collaborative learning models need to be developed with respect to both privacy and utility concerns. In this work, we propose a new federated multi-task learning method for effective parameter transfer with differential privacy to protect gradients at the client level. Specifically, the lower layers of the networks are shared across all clients to capture transferable feature representation, while top layers of the network are task-specific for on-client personalization. Our proposed algorithm naturally resolves the statistical heterogeneity problem in federated networks. We are, to the best of knowledge, the first to provide both privacy and utility guarantees for such a proposed federated algorithm. The convergences are proved for the cases with Lipschitz smooth objective functions under the non-convex, convex, and strongly convex settings. Empirical experiment results on different datasets have been conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and verify the implications of the theoretical findings.