Informal Data Transformation Considered Harmful

In this paper we take the common position that AI systems are limited more by the integrity of the data they are learning from than the sophistication of their algorithms, and we take the uncommon position that the solution to achieving better data integrity in the enterprise is not to clean and validate data ex-post-facto whenever needed (the so-called data lake approach to data management, which can lead to data scientists spending 80% of their time cleaning data), but rather to formally and automatically guarantee that data integrity is preserved as it transformed (migrated, integrated, composed, queried, viewed, etc) throughout the enterprise, so that data and programs that depend on that data need not constantly be re-validated for every particular use.