As the relationship between humans and technology is becoming more solid and complex, scientists are beginning to take a major step towards teaching robots to trust.
The step is taken as robots are increasingly becoming important in the lives of humans even to the point of taking part in surgery, rescue mission, and surprisingly, with things like Sex Doll Samantha, even intimacy.
The concept of trust in robotics, however, may be viewed from two ways; teaching robots to trust humans on one hand, and whether or not humans can trust robots on another hand.
According to TechCrunch, a Tufts University lab has already begun working on the question: Should robots trust us? Even as the question of whether we should trust robots.
Work on it has been on for a decade, led by a team led computer science professor Matthias Scheutz. The team has been able to come up with a demo of what it has been able to achieve, using two white Nao robots (programmable humanoid robot) which were are crouched atop a wooden table, facing away from one another.
One of the robots was asked to walk forward even with a fence in front of it. When it was told the fence would give way, it trusted, and the fence actually gave way.
According to Scheutz the fact that the fence was not solid as told to the robot has been stored in its memory.
Essentially, when a human provides information which the robot cannot independently verify, it will learn to trust that the person is telling the truth. Through this, a distinction is made between a trusted and untrusted source.
He as well stated that teaching robots to trust also includes making it understand what is expected of it, and what is not. There is as well the part of making the robot understand its social and moral obligation.
The team working on the project believes that since robots are becoming a part of humans, it is important to help them know who they can trust and who they cannot so that they do not end up taking orders from the wrong people or strangers.
Another thing that is frightening and interesting at the same time is the fact that there is networking system between the robots, meaning that they can easily share information among themselves. This means that what one robot in the line of robots the team is working on knows, the others know.
The goal of the work is to help the make robots natural and safe for humans, as well as to make them act in a way that is consistent with the social and moral expectations of humans.
If what is in your mind is about how soon we would start hearing of robots with broken hearts, maybe we are thinking of the same thing.
