Will your Home Robots Always be Truthful?

Last night I was watching the excellent new series, Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. The super-sexy robot from the future, Cameron, played by the lovely Summer Glau, was asked by John Conner if she would ever lie to him.  She matter-of-factly said yes, she would. He was her why and she responded that she would lie if it helped her mission.  Needless to say, John Conner was taken back by that.  Someday soon, you too will have robots in your home. While they hopefully will not be a human-killing machine like Cameron, they will none-the-less be your trusted servants or companions.  How much would faith will you place in their veracity?

A post today in Medal Blogging brings up this topic for discussion.  He cites the work of Dario Floreano et al. on the use of evolutionary algorithms for evolving robots. Apparently his work is shows that some robots actually learn to lie by giving other robots deceptive information about food location. Posts on the subject can be found at Herself’s Artificial Intelligence and Deception Blog. The referred work is described in the a Discover Magazine article called Robots Evolve and Learn How to Lie.

Of course, we needn’t worry. I’d think that by the time robots are smart enough to lie, humans will be smart enough ot have built a personal home lie detector.

by Mark Fleming on March 05, 2008 in Research