Corresponding characteristics


The idea that robots will defeat humanity is a myth, says Marcus Woo, but one of the real concerns they pose have been ignored?
Joss Wright forms a robot to make people.
Wright, a computer scientist, traces an experience with a humanoid robot called Nao. He and his colleagues plan to present this pretty bot to the people of the street and elsewhere – where he will deliberately invade their intimacy. After meeting foreigners, for example, Nao can use facial recognition software to dig up detailed online information about them. Or, this can exploit the monitoring history of their mobile phone, learn where they had lunch yesterday and ask what they thought of soup.
Experience is part of a project called Humans and robots in public spacesWho explores how people interact with the robots – and what is happening when playful machines know more about us than we think.
Wright is one of the many researchers wondering if we can trust robots ready to enter our lives. If we believe in Hollywood, the greatest danger has robots of robots is their superior strength and intelligence, which could destroy us all. However, these scientists and academics argue that the real future of robotics seems quite different. If the robots become omnipresent, they can constantly look at us and register. One of the greatest threats seems to be for our privacy. So, to what extent should we worry?


However, despite the progress of technology and artificial intelligence, we are still far from intelligent robots. What will give them, however, is the cloud: distributed and network computer in which the Internet lives. By connecting to the Internet, robots can recover information and ask for help when they sail in the world, for example.
This would be the next step in a technological development already underway. “What we see more and more now is the existence of computers and detection devices within the framework of the infrastructure around us,” explains Wright, based at the Oxford Internet Institute of The University of Oxford. With smartphones, the rise of portable technologies like Google Glass and the availability of wireless internet almost everywhere, the Internet integrates more deep into our environment.
“In the end, what a robot is or what a robot represents is a growing presence of computers as a more physical objects with which we interact,” explains Wright. “These interactions will be very rich,” he adds. “It will be physical and omnipresent.”


This is perhaps part of the reason why some of the main web technology companies, such as Google, have adopted robotics. Some researchers and defenders of privacy fear that robots can act as physical extensions of these companies, which gives them enormous access to your life. For example, a housekeeping robot can collect details on your home and monitor your activities while it stores. He can then sell this information about your home and your hobbies to companies that may target you with announcements and products.
But what can really distinguish robots from computers is their appearance. “If you make them look like humans, people could start trusting them in a way of risking,” said Mireille Hildebrandt, law, in private and internet at Radboud Nijmegen university in the Netherlands.


After all, people tend to treat robots as something more than another element of technology, even if it doesn’t look like a human at all. In a study oft cited in 2007, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology Questioned 30 owners of RoombaThe robotic vacuum cleaner in the shape of a disc, and found that the majority gave their names of robots and a sex, many even considering it as a family member as if it were a pet.
This is why Wright and his colleagues want to see how people react to an invadative robot in privacy. The NAO normally does not see confidentiality (see the video below), but it can be programmed to be a robot snooic. In their experience, Nao will not do much more than what the computers and smartphones of today do. But these devices are inanimate objects. “What’s going on when it is an anthropomorphic robot?” He wonders. If it is a robot that does all these things, are people more frequent? Less? Are they more or less willing to share information?
We do not yet know what the results will be, but Wright thinks that there must be measures to protect our privacy against robots anyway. However, the answer is not to prevent our data to be shared, he said. It is a question of ensuring that compromises in information are fair, because some of the data that robots collect can be beneficial. Robots caregivers can anticipate potential health problems by monitoring blood pressure and glucose levels, for example.
What is necessary are means of incorporating guarantees into the architecture and design of the robots themselves, says Wright, rather than repairing the risk of confidentiality after the fact. In particular, it designs systems and protocols which collect only the data necessary for the planned task. On the other hand, for example, smartphones applications and web emails are now gathering all kinds of data – information that helps companies learn more about you, but are not really necessary to play Candy Crush or write a e-mail.
But for these solutions to work, says Wright, there must be a legal application. Hildebrandt agrees. “I think it is very important that the law is involved and that we obtain substantial protection of the data,” she said. In 1995, the European Union published a data protection directive to protect personal information. In 2012, the European Commission proposed Reform these rules to strengthen online confidentiality. “If we do not learn to adopt this intentional position,” she says, “then I think we have deep trouble.”
In the interconnected age today, there is more information available on us than ever before. And the presence of robots increases the bet: if it turns out that we are more likely to feel comfortable with them because of their appearance, this raises serious questions about the access they should have to Our life. After all, behind these robotic eyes, someone else can look.