Trusting AI ≠ 'Trustworthy AI'
Do you know the difference?
It’s equivocation all the way down folks…
Jokes.
Well, only in part.
Trust can be usefully thought of as the willingness (an intentional stance) to be vulnerable (accepting a spectrum of uncertainty, but particularly the possibility of ‘harm’ at some level) to the actions of another based on positive expectations (an assessment of their trustworthiness; their benevolence, integrity and normative competence).
*It is a process of sorts, influenced by a variety of factors, that leads to a position that then influences action.
Trustworthy AI describes a set of system characteristics that various groups have deemed normative in the context of sociotechnical system development.
These two things are not the same. And the system characteristics certain groups have deemed normative in this context don’t mean that a system itself is actually worthy of trust (or that it’s even possible to actually trust said system itself).
But to understand this, we have to dive a tad deeper.
Hopefully this has sparked some questions within you.
With love as always.
P.S. This presentation, from a Data61 Symposium in late 2024, may be of interest to you.
Very useful distinction between the conditions for trust in a human relationship, and the kind of relationship we have with an AI system. I agree with you that "Trustworthy AI" is a shorthand contraction which conflates two different things. However, I wonder if the easiest path forward is to adopt a negative definition of trustworthy AI, one that avoids some of the ontological knots you point out. In that case, trustworthy AI would be *a use of AI that does not damage the trustworthiness of the organisation deploying it*. This keeps trust located within a relationship between people who can hold responsibilities to each other, but still recognizing that delegation of activities to an AI systems can indeed damage that trust. So, while such systems may well be utterly indifferent to our responsibilities to each other, those systems are not inert with respect to them - and so must be assessed and managed with those responsibilities in mind.