From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 11:53:19 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: CFP: DECEPTION, FRAUD and TRUST in AGENT SOCIETIES Workshop at AA'98
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Subject: CFP: DECEPTION, FRAUD and TRUST in AGENT SOCIETIES Workshop at
 AA'98
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Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 15:30:24 -0500
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            DECEPTION, FRAUD and TRUST in AGENT SOCIETIES


                          Workshop at the
      Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents (AA'98)
                  <http://www.cis.udel.edu/~agents98>


                         FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

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 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

The full-day workshop will be aimed at creating an informal atmosphere for
stimulating discussions, interdisciplinary exchange and deep understanding
of each other's pespective.
We plan to have both:

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.

The accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings. The
publication of a revised version of the accepted papers is being negotiated
with a high quality publisher.

SUBMISSION: CRITERIA, FORMATS, PROCEDURE

The workshop welcomes submissions of original, high quality papers
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 papers should be new work that has not been published elsewhere
or is not about to be published elsewhere.

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 electronic submission
Rino Falcone
falcone@pscs2.irmkant.rm.cnr.it
tel. +39 - 6 - 860 90 211

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

Deadline for the electronic title page          January 15, 1998
Deadline for Paper Submission                   January 20, 1998
Notification of Acceptance/Rejection            March  1, 1998
Deadline for camera-ready version               April  1, 1998
Workshop                                        May 9, 1998



PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Phil Cohen
        Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Oregon Inst. of Science
and Tech., USA

Robert Demolombe
        CERT/ONERA, France

Andrew J I Jones
        Dept. of Philosophy - Univ. of Oslo, Norway

Anand Rao
        Australian AI Institute, Melbourne, Australia

Munindar Singh
        Dept. of Computer Science - North Carolina State University, USA

Chris Snijders
        Dept. of Sociology, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Gilad Zlotkin
        VP Engineering, Israel

Gerd Wagner
        Inst.f.Informatik - Univ. Leipzig, Germany

Cristiano  Castelfranchi (co-chair)
        National Research Council - Institute of Psychology- Rome, Italy

Yao-Hua Tan (co-chair)
        EURIDIS - 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

==========
Rino Falcone
IP - CNR     National Research Council
Division of "Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Modeling and Interaction"
Viale Marx, 15  00137 ROMA

email: falcone@pscs2.irmkant.rm.cnr.it   or  falcone@vaxiac.iac.rm.cnr.it
 tel: ++39 6 86090.211 fax: ++39 6 86090.214
==========


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