Provenance and lineage
Provenance records where a dataset came from and on what terms; lineage traces it backward from a model to its sources and forward to every model using it.
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Provenance is where a dataset came from and on what terms. Lineage is how the data moved and changed through pipelines, recorded as lineage events about datasets, jobs and runs. Lineage runs both ways: backward lineage answers "what fed this model?", forward lineage answers "which models used this dataset?", and the second question is the one an erasure request or a licence withdrawal asks. Granularity follows where rights attach: dataset-level provenance is the default, record-level provenance is needed where rights attach to records (personal data, per-source licences, opt-outs), and feature-level lineage is needed for sensitive derived features that can act as proxies. The human-readable companion is a datasheet.
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“Provenance and lineage” by Jorge García Aibar, aigovernanceengineer.com (https://aigovernanceengineer.com/figures/provenance-lineage), v0.5.0. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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<img src="https://aigovernanceengineer.com/downloads/figures/provenance-lineage-v0.5.0-light-1600.png" alt="Provenance records where a dataset came from and on what terms; lineage traces it backward from a model to its sources and forward to every model using it." width="800" height="1088" loading="lazy">
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<a href="https://aigovernanceengineer.com/figures/provenance-lineage">Provenance and lineage</a> by Jorge García Aibar,
aigovernanceengineer.com, v0.5.0.
Licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a>.
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*[Provenance and lineage](https://aigovernanceengineer.com/figures/provenance-lineage) by Jorge García Aibar, aigovernanceengineer.com, v0.5.0. Licensed under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).*