Trust is a judgement of unquestionable utility — as humans we use it every day of our lives. However, trust has suffered from an imperfect understanding, a plethora of definitions, and informal use in the literature and in everyday life. It is common to say “I trust you,” but what does that mean? This thesis provides a clarification of trust. We present a formalism for trust which provides us with a tool for precise discussion. The formalism is implementable: it can be embedded in an artificial agent, enabling the agent to make trust-based decisions. Its applicability in the domain of Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) is raised. The thesis presents a testbed populated by simple trusting agents which substantiates the utility of the formalism. The formalism provides a step in the direction of a proper understanding and definition of human trust. A contribution of the thesis is its detailed exploration of the possibilities of future work in the area.

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Formalising Trust as a Computational Concept

Despite the profound and pervasive importance of trust in medical settings, there is no commonly shared understanding of what trust means, and little is known about what difference trust actually makes, what factors affect trust, and how trust relates to other similar attitudes and behaviors. To address this gap in understanding, the emerging theoretical, empirical, and public policy literature on trust in physicians and in medical institutions is reviewed and synthesized. Based on this review and additional research and analysis, a formal definition and conceptual model of trust is presented, with a review of the extent to which this model has been confirmed by empirical studies. This conceptual and empirical understanding has significance for ethics, law, and public policy.

/pdf/trust-in-physicians-and-medical-institutions-what-is-it-can-4rud87bmyx.pdf

Trust in physicians and medical institutions: what is it, can it be measured, and does it matter?

The many faces of trust

There has been a lot of research and development in the field of computational trust in the past decade. Much of it has acknowledged or claimed that trust is a good thing. We think it's time to look at the other side of the coin and ask the questions why is it good, what alternatives are there, where do they fit, and is our assumption always correct?

We examine the need for an addressing of the concepts of Trust, Mistrust, and Distrust, how they interlink and how they affect what goes on around us and within the systems we create. Finally, we introduce the phenomenon of ‘Untrust,' which resides in the space between trusting and distrusting. We argue that the time is right, given the maturity and breadth of the field of research in trust, to consider how untrust, distrust and mistrust work, why they can be useful in and of themselves, and where they can shine.

Trust, untrust, distrust and mistrust – an exploration of the dark(er) side

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03098449/document

Olli Lagenspetz

Papers

Legitimacy and Trust