--- begin forwarded text To: e$@vmeng.com Subject: CFP: DECEPTION, FRAUD and TRUST in AGENT SOCIETIES Workshop at AA'98 Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 15:30:24 -0500 From: Mary Ellen Zurko Sender: Precedence: Bulk 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 ========== -- See http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agentslist for list info & archives. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Where people, networks and money come together: Consult Hyperion http://www.hyperion.co.uk/ info@hyperion.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Full-Strength Cryptographic Solutions for Worldwide Electronic Commerce http://www.c2.net/ stronghold@c2.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Like e$? 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