Knowledge discovery and system‐user adversary

Abstract

Examines the relationship between systems and their users from the knowledge discovery perspective. Recently knowledge discovery in databases has made important progress, but it may also bring some potential problems to database design, such as issues related to database security, as an unauthorized user may derive highly sensitive knowledge from unclassified data. There is a need for a comprehensive study on knowledge discovery in human‐computer symbiosis. Borrowing terms from algorithm design and artificial intelligence literature, proposes a notion called database‐user adversarial partnership. This notion is general enough to cover various knowledge discovery and security issues related to databases and their users. Furthermore, the notion of database‐user adversarial partnership can be further generalized into system‐user adversarial partnership. Opportunities provided by knowledge discovery techniques and potential social implications are discussed and illustrated by examples.