Institutional Robotics and Norms in Multi-agent Systems

Recently, I read about the PEIS project. They provide a hardware abstraction middle-ware in order to program devices in applications of Ambient Intelligence. They provide the code and tutorials on how to create your own controllers.Now suppose you installed this awesome intelligent and cooperative system at home and a pranking friend gives you a new intelligent toaster that perfectly integrates with the PEIS system that you just installed.

Comic strip extracted from PEIS Tutorial
Your so-called friend might have modified the toaster controller to function almost correctly but in random situations it would interfere with the system in order to play pranks on you.This friendly example is one of many showing the importance of applying Institutional Robotics in our robot research.Cheers!

Edit: I admit that the current approach of digitally signing the code may avoid some attacks. However, if we develop intelligent devices taking spoken orders from their owner, we will not be protected from pre-trained toasters sent by pranking friends (unless we agree on the importance of applying Institutional Robotics on them)

Edit 2: If we would follow Conspiracy theory and do not solve this, in a not so distant future we should not bring home any gift (including cash) from banks, governments, etc. (the so-called friends) even if they gave them to us because we are a very “special” client or citizen. Their real goal might be using them to extend the scope of their spying and controlling technologies.

Edit 3: I may say that including RFID into cash might end some frauds to the Treasury and robberies. However, thieves with the proper technology might also be capable to easily select a victim.

Conclusion: any technology capable of spying and controlling should be regulated by a neutral and trustworthy party in order to give only legitimate access to these capabilities.

Edit 4: In my humble opinion, access control should not only be based in who access the capabilities but also what for and in what context. For instance, you might allow your personal robot to wave a hand at your pranking friend’s command to greet another friend. But you hardly would allow this in auctions selling items you do not want to buy.

Institutional Robotics and Norms in Multi-agent systems by Andrés García-Camino is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Spain License.
Based on a work at blog.garcia-camino.es.