I hope we don't do to trust what advertising has done to love

2026-04-30

AI Summary

This work addresses the prevalent misuse and conceptual vagueness surrounding “trust” in contemporary artificial intelligence, particularly within agent-based systems—a phenomenon akin to the commodification of “love” in advertising. The paper introduces, for the first time, a structured “pillars of trust” framework that operationalizes abstract notions of trust into measurable, actionable dimensions. Through human-AI interaction design, these dimensions are concretized as a “trust vector.” This framework not only facilitates interdisciplinary dialogue across computational domains and civil society but also establishes a theoretical foundation and public deliberation mechanism for the design and evaluation of trustworthy AI systems, thereby advancing the standardization and transparency of trust in technical practice.

Abstract

Advertising uses love to sell stuff, like nylons. It also uses the word "love" in trivialising ways -- do you "love" your oven? When I hear about trust in the context of AI, especially agentic, I hope we don't do to trust what advertising has done to love. But what is trust? Can we discuss it in actionable and measurable ways in the context of AI? Thus I suggest a number of "trust pillars", hoping to start a communal conversation, across computing and beyond, to civil society. I also suggest that agentic systems may be a blessing in disguise, as we may be able to turn their explicit interfaces into "trust vectors".

Problem

• trust
• AI
• agentic systems
• measurable trust
• trust definition

Innovation

• trust pillars
• agentic systems
• trust vectors
• measurable trust
• AI ethics