The Crisis of Trust in AI and Autonomous Systems

The future is robotic. Already we are seeing how society is changing with self-driving cars and robots at hospitals and schools. The huge potential of autonomous systems (AS) is highly discussed. What is not highly discussed, and rarely even acknowledged, is the key role trust plays in realizing these benefits. No common way of defining, testing, or measuring it exists. I argue that this lack of research on trust, both in general but also in human-AS relations, may at best result in sporadic progress and adoption of these systems and may at worst lead to public disillusionment and abandonment, delaying the potentials of AS.