# Trustworthiness of Stochastic Gradient Descent in Distributed Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.21491 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21491/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 22 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Oct 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Membership Inference Attacks against Machine Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05820/) (2016)
- [Federated Learning: Strategies for Improving Communication Efficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.05492/) (2016)
- [Deep Leakage from Gradients](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.08935/) (2019)
- [Inverting Gradients -- How easy is it to break privacy in federated learning?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.14053/) (2020)
- [Exploiting Unintended Feature Leakage in Collaborative Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04049/) (2018)
- [Deep Gradient Compression: Reducing the Communication Bandwidth for Distributed Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.01887/) (2017)
- [Sparsified SGD with Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.07599/) (2018)
- [See through Gradients: Image Batch Recovery via GradInversion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07586/) (2021)
- [Error Feedback Fixes SignSGD and other Gradient Compression Schemes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.09847/) (2019)
- [Systematic Evaluation of Privacy Risks of Machine Learning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10595/) (2020)
- [Sparse Communication for Distributed Gradient Descent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.05021/) (2017)
- [PowerSGD: Practical Low-Rank Gradient Compression for Distributed Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.13727/) (2019)
- [The Convergence of Sparsified Gradient Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.10505/) (2018)
- [Gradient Sparsification for Communication-Efficient Distributed Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.09854/) (2017)
- [Evaluating Gradient Inversion Attacks and Defenses in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00059/) (2021)
- [On Biased Compression for Distributed Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12410/) (2020)
- [ATOMO: Communication-efficient Learning via Atomic Sparsification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.04090/) (2018)
- [A Framework for Evaluating Gradient Leakage Attacks in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10397/) (2020)
- [Evaluations of Machine Learning Privacy Defenses are Misleading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17399/) (2024)
- [On the Privacy Effect of Data Enhancement via the Lens of Memorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.08270/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Lightweight Trustworthy Distributed Clustering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10109/) (2025)
- [Trustworthy Efficient Communication for Distributed Learning using LQ-SGD Algorithm](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.17974/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Distributed learning (DL) uses multiple nodes to accelerate training, enabling efficient optimization of large-scale models. Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD), a key optimization algorithm, plays a central role in this process. However, communication bottlenecks often limit scalability and efficiency, leading to increasing adoption of compressed SGD techniques to alleviate these challenges. Despite addressing communication overheads, compressed SGD introduces trustworthiness concerns, as gradient exchanges among nodes are vulnerable to attacks like gradient inversion (GradInv) and membership inference attacks (MIA). The trustworthiness of compressed SGD remains unexplored, leaving important questions about its reliability unanswered. In this paper, we provide a trustworthiness evaluation of compressed versus uncompressed SGD. Specifically, we conducted empirical studies using GradInv attacks, revealing that compressed SGD demonstrates significantly higher resistance to privacy leakage compared to uncompressed SGD. In addition, our findings suggest that MIA may not be a reliable metric for assessing privacy risks in distributed learning.