Dynamic Pedigree Assembly for Information Trustworthiness
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users face challenges in determining the trustworthiness of information presented to them, as the provenance and manipulation history of the information are often unclear, making it difficult to assess the reliability of the information sources.
Innovation Solution
A system of pedigree management servers hosts context objects that can dynamically assemble the pedigree of a resource, allowing for the evaluation of trustworthiness by tracing the origin and manipulation history of information through a two-stage query process, enabling the presentation of trustworthiness assessments in applications like web browsers.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If information is presented to users without pedigree information, then the ease of operation is improved, but the reliability of information assessment deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The pedigree information is segmented into discrete context objects that can be independently queried and assembled. Each context object contains specific provenance statements that can be retrieved on-demand and combined to form the complete pedigree, allowing reliability assessment without overwhelming the user interface
Solution Approach 2:
A context assembly device acts as an intermediary between the pedigree management servers and the user interface. This intermediary dynamically assembles pedigree information from multiple context objects and presents it in a consolidated, user-friendly format, enabling trustworthiness assessment without requiring users to interact with complex distributed data sources
2Productivity
If pedigree information is pre-assembled and stored, then the productivity is improved, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system transitions from static pre-assembled pedigrees to dynamic on-demand assembly. Context objects are stored in a distributed manner across servers, and the context assembly device dynamically queries and assembles relevant pedigree information based on specific resource requests, reducing the need for complex pre-processing and storage infrastructure
Solution Approach 2:
Context objects containing provenance statements are pre-stored in the pedigree management servers in a structured format. This preliminary organization of data allows for efficient querying and rapid assembly of pedigrees when needed, achieving fast retrieval without requiring complex real-time processing infrastructure
3Measurement precision
If complete pedigree information is retrieved, then the measurement precision is improved, but the loss of time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The context assembly device retrieves only the necessary context objects required to assemble the pedigree for the specific resource being queried, rather than retrieving all available pedigree information. This selective approach achieves sufficient provenance completeness for trustworthiness assessment while minimizing retrieval and assembly time
Data Source
AI summary
This disclosure describes techniques of dynamically assembling and utilizing a pedigree of a resource. A pedigree of a resource is a set of statements that describe a provenance of the resource. As described herein, a set of one or more servers may host context objects that contain the statements that make up the pedigree of the resource. In order to obtain the pedigree of the resource, a context assembly device may send queries to the servers for context objects that are likely to contain statements in the pedigree of the resource. After receiving context objects from the servers in response to the queries, the context assembly device may query the statements in the received context objects in order to identify, among the statements in the context objects, the statements that constitute the pedigree of the resource. The dynamically assembled pedigree may then be used in a variety of ways.