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The Third International Conference on
AUTONOMOUS AGENTS (Agents '99)
Seattle (WA) - USA
http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/agents99
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WORKSHOP ON
Deception, Fraud and Trust in Agent Societies
Saturday May 1 - 1999
CALL FOR PAPERS
IMPORTANT DATES
* IMPORTANT: Title + Abstract February 15, 1999
Submission of the Extended Abstract or Paper March 1, 1999
Notification of Acceptance/Rejection March 17, 1999
Deadline for camera-ready version April 5, 1999
Workshop May 1, 1999
MOTIVATION OF THE WORKSHOP:
After the success of the previous workshop at the AGENTS'98, successful in
terms of number of participants as well as inspiring discussions (a book
published by Kluwer will be the final result of that workshop); and given
that this topic is rapidly growing and attracting people in several
domains, in particular in Electronic Commerce, we would like to propose to
organise a similar Workshop at AGENTS'99.
DESCRIPTION OF THE WORKSHOP:
The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers that can
contribute to a better understanding of trust and deception in agent
societies. Most agent models assume secure and reliable communication to
exist between agents. However, this ideal situation is seldom met in real
life. Therefore, many techniques (e.g. contracts, signatures, long-term
personnel relationships) have been evolved over time to detect and prevent
deception and fraud in human communication, exchanges and relations, and
hence to assure trust between agents.In recent research on electronic
commerce trust has been recognized as one of the key factors for successful
electronic commerce adoption. In electronic commerce problems of trust are
magnified, because agents reach out far beyond their familiar trade
environments. Also it is far from obvious whether existing paper-based
techniques for fraud detection and prevention are adequate to establish
trust in an electronic network environment where you usually never meet
your trade partner face to face, and where messages can be read or copied a
million times without leaving any trace. Trust building is more than secure
communication via electronic networks, as can be obtained with, for
example, public key cryptography techniques. For example, the reliability
of information about the status of your trade partner has very little to do
with secure communication. With the growing impact of electronic commerce
distance trust building becomes more and more important, and better models
of trust and deception are needed. One trend is that in electronic
communication channels extra agents, the so-called Trusted Third Parties,
are introduced in an agent community that take care of trust building among
the other agents in the network. But in fact different kind of trust are
needed and should be modeled and supported: trust in the environment and in
the infrastructure (the socio-technical system) including trust in your
agent and in mediating agents; trust in the potential partners; trust in
the warrantors and authorities (if any).The notion of trust is also
important in other domains of agents' theory, beyond that of electronic
commerce. It seems even foundational for the notion of "agency" and for its
defining relation of acting "on behalf of". For example, trust is relevant
in Human-Computer interaction, e.g., the trust relation between the user
and her/his personal assistant (and, in general, her/his computer). It is
also critical for modeling and supporting groups and teams, organisations,
co-ordination, negotiation, with the related trade-off between
local/individual utility and global/collective interest; or in modelling
distributed knowledge and its circulation. In sum, the notion of trust is
crucial for all the major topics of Multi-Agent systems. What is needed is
a general and principled theory of trust, of its cognitive and affective
components, and of its social functions. A theory
and practical models have to be developed to answer questions like the
following: when is trust rational; when is it over-confidence and risky;
when is trust too weak and when do we waste time on redundant control
mechanisms or loose good opportunities by not taking advantage of
sufficient trust levels? What is the relation between the trust of the user
and 'dependability' on the socio-technical system? On which signs and
qualities do we base our trust in a face to face communication and how can
we substitute these in electronic interactions?
The study of deception is not only relevant for avoiding practical
troubles, but it is also foundational for the theory of communication.
First, because it challenges Grice's principle of linguistic communication
to be truthful. Second, because the notion of "sign" itself has been
defined in semiotics in relation to deception: "In principle, Semiotics is
the discipline studying whatever can be used for lying" (U. Eco). Thus not
only practical defence strategies against deception (like reputations,
guaranties, etc.) have to be investigated, but we need also to develop a
general and principled theory of the functions and usages of deception and
of its different manifestations (including fraud). Are we sure that
artificial agents will always be sincere and honest, and should we develop
techniques to discover deception among them and prevent it? When is the
agent simply keeping a secret or deceiving us by concealing something? What
about bargaining, that necessarily implies some justifiable concealment and
deception? Since people diffuse virus, why shouldn't they design fraudulent
agents that can successfully invade a commercial environment? What about
advise-giving systems that care about our interests and not only about our
request, and that might deceive us - like a medical doctor might deceive us
- for our own benefit?
We would encourage an interdisciplinary focus of the workshop - although
focused on virtual environments and artificial agents - as well as
presentations of a wide range of models of deception, fraud and
trust(building). Just to mention some examples; AI models, BDI models,
cognitive models, game theory and also organizational science theories
about trust building.
Suggested topics include, but are not restricted to:
* models of deception and of its functions
* models of trust and of its functions
* models of fraud
* role of trust and trusted third parties (TTP) in electronic commerce
* defensive strategies and mechanisms
* ways to detect and prevent deception and fraud
* secure transactions over the network
IMPORTANT DATES
* IMPORTANT: Title + Abstract February 15, 1999
Submission of the Extended Abstract or Paper March 1, 1999
Notification of Acceptance/Rejection March 17, 1999
Deadline for camera-ready version April 5, 1999
Workshop May 1, 1999
SUBMISSION: CRITERIA, FORMATS, PROCEDURE
The workshop welcomes submissions of original, high quality work addressing
issues that are clearly relevant to trust, deception and fraud in
agent-based systems, either from a theoretical or an applied perspective.
Papers will be peer reviewed by at least two referees from a group of
reviewers selected by the workshop organizers. Submitted contributions
should be new work that has not been published elsewhere or is not about to
be published elsewhere.
Paper or Abstract submissions: The authors should submit either an Extended
Abstract (4 pages) or a full paper (max.12 pages including a 300-400 word
abstract, all figures, tables, and bibliography). All contributions must be
written in English.
* The authors must send by email title and short abstract of their
paper by
February 15th.
* Submissions must be send electronically, as a postscript or MSword
format file, by March 1.
* The authors must also airmail one hard copy of their paper to TWO of the
organizers as soon as possible after the electronic submission.
* No submissions by fax or arriving after the deadline will be accepted.
SUBMISSION ADDRESS
for the electronic submission
Rino Falcone - [log in to unmask] - tel. +39 - 6 - 860 90 211
for the airmail hard copy
Rino Falcone - CNR- Institute of Psychology
V. Marx, 15 - 00137 Roma - ITALY - tel +39 6 860 90 518
and (notice "and")
Babak Sadighi Firozabadi - Department of Computing - Imperial College
180 Queen's Gate - London SW7 2BZ - U.K.
WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION
The workshop will be aimed at creating an informal atmosphere for
stimulating discussions, interdisciplinary exchange and deep
understandingof each other's pespective. We plan to have both:
- Paper presentations and discussions
- Panel sessions: A couple of topics will be selected for a focused
discussion and some of the attendees will be requested to
participate as
panelists.
The accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings. The
publication of a revised version of the accepted papers will be negotiated
with a high quality publisher.
PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
Robert Demolombe - CERT/ONERA - France
Diego Gambetta - University of Oxford - UK
Christopher P. Holland - Manchester Business School - UK
Andrew J I Jones - Dept. of Philosophy - Univ. of Oslo - Norway
Anand Rao - Mitchell Madison Group - Melbourne Australia
Jeff Rosenschein - University of Jerusalem - Israel
Munindar Singh - Computer Science- North Carolina State University, USA
Chris Snijders - Dept. of Sociology, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Gerd Wagner - Inst.f.Informatik - Univ. Leipzig, Germany
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Cristiano Castelfranchi (co-chair)
National Research Council - Institute of Psychology- Rome, Italy
Yao-Hua Tan (co-chair)
Erasmus Research Centre for Electronic Commerce (ECEC) - Erasmus
University - Rotterdam - The Netherlands
Rino Falcone (co-organizer)
National Research Council - Institute of Psychology- Rome, Italy
Babak Sadighi Firozabadi (co-organizer)
Department of Computing - Imperial College - London - UK
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