Social Internet of Things: Ethical AI Principles in Trust Management

Abstract

Trust management has become a fundamental requirement for Social Internet of Things (SIoT) to enable a trustworthy social network of smart objects necessary for enhancing the security and reliability of cyber-physical systems. To increase the credibility scores in trust management, AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been adopted. However, the current need for digital acceleration has brought ethical concerns related to the smartness and social consciousness of autonomous objects, which leads to a question whether AI-based trust management is ready to deal with these concerns. In this paper, we consider 11 ethical dimensions within the context of trust management in SIoT. Then, we examine the existing AI-based trust models in the context of SIoT and its related application domains to assess their maturity in terms of the 11 ethical dimensions. The evaluation results show how trust management can be improved by AI ethical principles in vehicular networks and underwater acoustic sensor networks.