Trust is Not a Virtue: Why We Should Not Trust Trust

Abstract

There is currently significant research and industry interest in engineering machines and algorithms that humans will trust. This is justified as a means for facilitating the adoption of developing technology. However, there are many problems with trust that directly relate to its epistemological validity, usefulness, ethical implications, and potential for human disempowerment. This article explores trust from this perspective in the hopes of encouraging the human factors engineering community to de-emphasize trust as an end goal and replace it with more objective measures and good human factors engineering practices.