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Social Welfare Maximization in Cross-Silo Federated Learning

As one of the typical settings of Federated Learning (FL), cross-silo FL allows organizations to jointly train an optimal Machine Learning (ML) model. In this case, some organizations may try to obtain the global model without contributing their local training, lowering the social welfare. In this paper, we model the interactions among organizations in cross-silo FL as a public goods game for the first time and theoretically prove that there exists a social dilemma where the maximum social welfare is not achieved in Nash equilibrium. To overcome this social dilemma, we employ the Multi-player Multi-action Zero-Determinant (MMZD) strategy to maximize the social welfare. With the help of the MMZD, an individual organization can unilaterally control the social welfare without extra cost. Experimental results validate that the MMZD strategy is effective in maximizing the social welfare.