[lkowalcz]

I've never heard of neural encryption before, do you have a good source for me?

From the Wikipedia page for "Neural cryptography", it seems like there's some success in using NN's for cryptanalysis, but not for constructions...

Edit: Do you mean the Google GAN experiment? (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.06918v1.pdf) Ahh ok, well at least for this there looks like an attempt at defining a security model (security against some other NN). I don't really believe the security model is realistic (how do we know NN's are really that effective as adversaries?), but at least there is a model, so calling that "encryption" sits somewhat better with me. I'm pretty sure this is not what's being used by Numerai since it seems like it would not result in ciphertexts with the structure necessary to perform ML operations on.

Edit2: Maybe you're right and it is more advanced. In any case, as a crypto nerd I wish they would disclose what they are actually doing / the rationale instead of tantalizingly suggesting that they have made (what would be) a breakthrough in a practical use case of advanced encryption schemes, but not saying how.

[sandGorgon]

That particular paper got a LOT of flames when it was posted to /r/MachineLearning

https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/59v9ua/r_1...