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 physically, 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 trustbuilding among the other agents in the network. For example, in some cases the successful application of public key cryptography critically depends on trusted third parties that issue the keys. Although we do not focus in this workshop on techniques for secure communication (e.g. public key cryptography), we would welcome analyses about the advantages and limitations of these techniques for trustbuilding.

The notion of trust is definitely 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". So, trust is relevant also in HC interaction; consider the relation between the user and her/his personal assistant (and, in general, her/his computer).   But it is also critical for modeling groups and teams, organisations, coordination, 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. Thus what is needed is a general and principled theory of trust, of its cognitive and affective components, and of its social functions.

Analogously the study of deception not only is very relevant for avoiding practical troubles, but it seems really foundational for the theory of communication. First, because it challenges Grice's principles of linguistic communication; 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 defences from deception (like reputations, guaranties, etc.), but also a general and principled theory of deception and of its forms (including fraud) are needed.

We would encourage an interdisciplinary focus of the workshop as well as the presentation 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 management science theories about trustbuilding.

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

WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION

• Paper presentations: Long presentations (25-30 min) of the accepted papers, plus 10-15 minutes for discussion (possibly with discussants). Plenary discussion at the end.
• Panel sessions: A couple of topics will be selected for a focused discussion. Some of the attendees will be requested to participate as panelists. The panels chairs will circulate prior to the workshop a list of questions for the panelists.

SUBMISSION: CRITERIA, FORMATS, PROCEDURE

Paper submissions: will include a full paper and a separate title page with the title, authors (full address), a 300-400 word abstract, and a list of keywords. The length of submitted papers must not exceed 12 pages including all figures, tables, and bibliography. All papers must be written in English.

• The authors must send by email  the title page of their paper by January 15th.
• Submissions must be send electronically, as a postscript or MSword format file, by January 20th.
• 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 airmail hard copy

Babak Sadighi Firozabadi
Department of Computing - Imperial College
180 Queen's Gate - London SW7 2BZ - U.K.

and (notice "and")

Cristiano Castelfranchi
National Research Council - Institute of Psychology
Viale Marx, 15 - 00137 Roma - ITALY
tel +39 6 860 90 518
 

IMPORTANT DATES

Workshop organizers:

Yao-Hua Tan (co-chair)
EURIDIS - Erasmus University - Rotterdam - The Netherlands
 
Babak Sadighi Firozabadi
Department of Computing - Imperial College - London - UK

Rino Falcone
National Research Council - Institute of Psychology- Rome - Italy