A Value-based Trust Assessment Model for Multi-agent Systems
This work addresses trust assessment for multi-agent systems in dynamic environments, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing value-based concepts without major breakthroughs.
The paper tackles the problem of trust assessment in multi-agent systems when past observations are insufficient, proposing a value-based model that incorporates agents' shared values, cautiousness, and dependency. The result is a simple approach to improve trust evaluation in unfamiliar situations.
An agent's assessment of its trust in another agent is commonly taken to be a measure of the reliability/predictability of the latter's actions. It is based on the trustor's past observations of the behaviour of the trustee and requires no knowledge of the inner-workings of the trustee. However, in situations that are new or unfamiliar, past observations are of little help in assessing trust. In such cases, knowledge about the trustee can help. A particular type of knowledge is that of values - things that are important to the trustor and the trustee. In this paper, based on the premise that the more values two agents share, the more they should trust one another, we propose a simple approach to trust assessment between agents based on values, taking into account if agents trust cautiously or boldly, and if they depend on others in carrying out a task.