{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/parameters-or-privacy-a-provable-tradeoff","title":"Parameters or Privacy: A Provable Tradeoff Between Overparameterization and Membership Inference","arxiv_id":"2202.01243","date":"2022-02-02","proceeding":null,"authors":["Jasper Tan","Blake Mason","Hamid Javadi","Richard G. Baraniuk"],"abstract":"A surprising phenomenon in modern machine learning is the ability of a highly overparameterized model to generalize well (small error on the test data) even when it is trained to memorize the training data (zero error on the training data). This has led to an arms race towards increasingly overparameterized models (c.f., deep learning). In this paper, we study an underexplored hidden cost of overparameterization: the fact that overparameterized models may be more vulnerable to privacy attacks, in particular the membership inference attack that predicts the (potentially sensitive) examples used to train a model. We significantly extend the relatively few empirical results on this problem by theoretically proving for an overparameterized linear regression model in the Gaussian data setting that membership inference vulnerability increases with the number of parameters. Moreover, a range of empirical studies indicates that more complex, nonlinear models exhibit the same behavior. Finally, we extend our analysis towards ridge-regularized linear regression and show in the Gaussian data setting that increased regularization also increases membership inference vulnerability in the overparameterized regime.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.01243v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.01243v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"parameters-or-privacy-a-provable-tradeoff","repo_url":"https://github.com/tanjasper/parameters_or_privacy","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"inference-attack","task_name":"Inference Attack"},{"task_slug":"membership-inference-attack","task_name":"Membership Inference Attack"},{"task_slug":"regression-1","task_name":"regression"}],"methods":[{"method_slug":"linear-regression","method_name":"Linear Regression"}],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2202.01243","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2202.01243"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-24T18:15:14+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/tanjasper/parameters_or_privacy","reach":null}],"summary":{"ran_draft_wrong":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":1,"ran":1,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":1,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"86e1b7bd2e0876c1","entry":"sample","repo":"tanjasper/parameters_or_privacy","repo_kind":"official","path":"experiments/experiment1.py","file_url":"https://github.com/tanjasper/parameters_or_privacy/blob/HEAD/experiments/experiment1.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_draft_wrong","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"MISDECLARED","metamorphic_tier":"invariant","behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"86e1b7bd2e0876c1"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}