The
Good Robot Principles

We believe in a future in which our civil societies have robots that make our lives better. If that future is going to be better for all members of society, those robots will need to treat everyone well. We call them Good Robots.

Our Golden Rule

A Blueprint For Civil Robots

The opposite of a Good Robot is not necessarily a bad robot. We live in a broken world, and there is a need for humans who ‘bear the sword’ as well as those that ‘work the plow’.

Those humans will choose their own tools, robotic or otherwise, and we do not judge them here.

Instead we offer below a blueprint for ordinary civil robots, the ones that will be picking up garbage, cutting the grass, and doing our dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs.

The Golden Rule says that you should “do unto others as you would have them do to you”.

The Golden Rule for Robots is to
Have your robots treat others as you would have their robots treat you.

Core principles

What Makes a Good Robot

Safety
A good robot puts the safety and comfort of others over its own. Our robots will not be unpleasant to you even if you are unpleasant to them. If you attack property, you will still have to answer to the police; but our civil bots, even the security ones, will not be armed and will never attack you back. Our bots will try to stay out of your way if possible, yielding to pedestrians and people with disabilities the same way a person would. They will primarily have cameras in the front, where you can see them; and they will use nonverbal cues to let everyone know their intentions.
Privacy
A good robot doesn’t spy on you by recording or using data that is bigger than you or bigger than your relationship. This means that a robot shouldn’t do anything with your name or face (or its memories of you) that would be weird or upsetting if a person did the same thing. If you are trespassing in front of a security bot, it will be recording you and may notice if it sees the same person several times in a night; but we will not give our robots access to big face databases. If you introduce yourself to a bot, it may remember you; but the next robot will not share those memories (since a human wouldn’t either).
Responsibility
A good robot doesn’t pollute, litter, or do ugly things. We will do our best to keep our bots in good shape, make them beautiful, and train them to treat people with reserve and dignity. We will do our best to keep our bots from contributing to noise or light pollution.

DaxOS

An open letter

A note from Joseph Sullivan on why Good Robots matter.

An Open Letter

When I first started building a general-purpose urban robot in 2015, I believed the biggest challenge to a robotic future would not be technological, but sociological. If people were suspicious of robots, they would eventually legislate them out of existence.

That suspicion is understandable. Many of us remember the optimism around the internet, online shopping, and social media. The benefits were obvious, but the downsides came later, as greed and the desire for fame began shaping those platforms in harmful ways.

From today’s vantage point, it seems clear that robots will be a major part of our human future. When I am old and robots are everywhere, I want to point to a good robot and tell my kids I helped make it that way. This “humans first” value will remain in Daxbot as long as my brother and I are in control of it. It is why we are cautious about investors, and why we hope to start a “Good Robot Foundation” to codify and certify this purpose.

We are turning these ideas into the “Good Robot Principles.” I hope that someday all public robots, whether made by Daxbot or not, will be Good Robots. I invite everyone who cares about a happy future for humans and robots to share and adopt the Good Robot standard.

Regards