Tuning the Agent Autonomy: the Relationships between Trust and Control

Contents

The relationship between trust and control is quite relevant both for the very notion of trust and for modelling and implementing trust-control relations with autonomous systems. We claim that control is antagonistic of the strict form of trust: trust in y; but also that it completes and complements it for arriving to a global trust. In other words, putting control and guaranties is trust-building; it produces a sufficient trust, when trust in y’s autonomous willingness and competence would not be enough. We also argue that control requires new forms of trust: trust in the control itself or in the controller, trust in y as for being monitored and controlled; trust in possible authorities; etc. Finally, we show that paradoxically control could not be antagonistic of strict trust in y, but it can even create, increase it by making y more willing or more effective. In conclusion, depending on the circumstances, control makes y more reliable or less reliable; control can either decrease or increase trust. A good theory of trust cannot be complete without a theory of control.