SEEC: Semantic Vector Federation across Edge Computing Environments
This addresses the limitation of existing embedding methods for businesses with sensitive data distributed across edge locations, though it appears incremental as it adapts federated learning and proposes translation algorithms.
The paper tackles the problem of applying semantic vector embedding techniques to distributed edge environments where data cannot be aggregated due to constraints like sensitivity, by proposing SEEC algorithms for federated learning and semantic vector translation, with experimental results indicating it as a promising direction.
Semantic vector embedding techniques have proven useful in learning semantic representations of data across multiple domains. A key application enabled by such techniques is the ability to measure semantic similarity between given data samples and find data most similar to a given sample. State-of-the-art embedding approaches assume all data is available on a single site. However, in many business settings, data is distributed across multiple edge locations and cannot be aggregated due to a variety of constraints. Hence, the applicability of state-of-the-art embedding approaches is limited to freely shared datasets, leaving out applications with sensitive or mission-critical data. This paper addresses this gap by proposing novel unsupervised algorithms called \emph{SEEC} for learning and applying semantic vector embedding in a variety of distributed settings. Specifically, for scenarios where multiple edge locations can engage in joint learning, we adapt the recently proposed federated learning techniques for semantic vector embedding. Where joint learning is not possible, we propose novel semantic vector translation algorithms to enable semantic query across multiple edge locations, each with its own semantic vector-space. Experimental results on natural language as well as graph datasets show that this may be a promising new direction.