There will be deceiving agents
in the network, in CSCW and virtual organisations, in interfaces, in social
simulation, and teams of robots. Not only malicious agents for malicious
motives, but agents deceiving us or others for good reasons or in our interest.
How and why will they try to deceive? I will provide some ontology
about deception, lie, and secret; I will discuss some reasons and strategies
for directly or indirectly deceiving and lying, and some defensive approaches
against deception. Trust is fundamental for any kind of action in an uncertain
world; in particular it is crucial for any form of coordination and cooperation
with other autonomous agents. Trust will be especially important in computer
mediated social interaction and in 'social' interfaces; it is strongly
related to security issues and to dependability, but it is not reducible
to them. It needs its own theory, addressing such questions as: What
is trust; how it is connected with decision making and risk; how
and when it is rational, irrational, or excessive; on which beliefs and
evaluations it is based; which is the relationship between credibility
of beliefs and sources and trust in partners and organisations; what is
the relation between trust and reputation; how to increase and compensate
trust; how important is environmental trust and in particular trust in
infrastructures, organisations, procedures and rules; what is the role
of a third party
and authorities. I will discuss some of these issues on the basis of our
cognitive and social model of trust, and the results of the '98 and '99
Workshops organised with Yao-Hua Tan on these topics.