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

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”.

Dax robot on sidewalk

Core Principles.

  • 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 it.  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 queues 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 it’s 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. 

Joseph Sullivan, co-founder of Daxbot

An Open Letter

When I first started building a general-purpose urban robot in 2015, I began with the belief that the biggest challenge to a robotic future was not technological, but sociological. After all, if people were suspicious of robots, they would legislate them out of existence.

The public is justified in being suspicious. Many of us remember the unvarnished optimism with which we all greeted the internet, online shopping, and social media. The benefits were obvious; the downside was not. We all watched with a sense of tragic inevitability as baser human instincts such as greed and the desire for fame overtook these platforms to the detriment of all.

From the vantage point of 2025, it seems certain that robots will be a large part of our human future. When I am old and robots are everywhere, I want to be able to point to a good robot and tell my kids that I played a part in making it that way. This is far better than saying that I made (or lost!) a billion dollars. This "humans first" value will remain in Daxbot as long as my brother and I are in control of it. This is why we are cautious about taking investors. It is also why we want to start a "good robot foundation" to codify and certify this purpose.

We are codifying these ideas into a set of principles governing our use of robots, called the "Good Robot Principles." I hope that all robots I meet in public will someday be Good Robots, even if they are not Dax robots. I invite everyone who cares about a happy future for humans and robots to share and adopt the Good Robot standard.

Regards,

Joseph Sullivan Daxbot