A comprehensive approach to trust management

Abstract

Trust has been recognized as a key component of agent decision making in the context of multiagent systems (MASs). Though diverse trust models and mechanisms, influenced by various fields of study, have been proposed, implemented, and evaluated, we believe that the literature has ignored key aspects of pragmatic and holistic trust based reasoning. In particular, the focus of trust research has been on a posteriori evaluation of the trustworthiness of another agent and relatively few efforts have investigated the issue of establishment, engagement, and usage of trusted relationships. We envision that a holistic agent architecture will not use a trust module as a black-box for evaluating others but as a core component that will inform and shape interactions with other agents in the environment to best serve the decision-makers interests. Accordingly, we present a general and comprehensive trust management scheme (CTMS) that addresses key issues surrounding trust development, maintenance, and use. We present an operational definition of trust motivated by uncertainty management and utility optimization. We identify the various components required of a CTMS and their relationships and overview their use in the existing literature on trust in MAS. We welcome the MAS community to develop on the ideas presented here and build effective agent designs and implementations with fully-integrated CTMS cores.