On the Application of Supervised Machine Learning to Trustworthiness Assessment

State-of-the art trust and reputation systems seek to apply machine learning methods to overcome generalizability issues of experience-based Bayesian trust assessment. These approaches are, however, often model-centric instead of focussing on data and the complex adaptive system that is driven by reputation-based service selection. This entails the risk of unrealistic model assumptions. We outline the requirements for robust probabilistic trust assessment using supervised learning and apply a selection of estimators to a real-world dataset, in order to show the effectiveness of supervised methods. Furthermore, we provide a representational mapping of estimator output to a belief logic representation for the modular integration of supervised methods with other trust assessment methodologies.