Adding a dash of encryption to key algorithms used in artificial intelligence models could – surprisingly – make them more efficient, thanks to a trick of mathematics.

Cryptography normally involves scrambling messages to make them appear random to malicious onlookers while preserving their information by hiding a pattern in the randomness. This randomness can then be unlocked with the correct key.

Now, Or Zamir at Tel Aviv University in Israel and Vinod Vaikuntanathan at the Massachusetts Institute of…