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Why and How Robots Should Say ‘No’

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“Listen, Mike, what did you say to Speedy when you sent him after the selenium?” Donovan was taken aback. “Well damn it – I don’t know. I just told him to get it.” “Yes, I know, but how? Try to remember the exact words.” “I said...uh...I said: ‘Speedy, we need some selenium. You can get it such-and-such a place. Go get it – that’s all. What more did you want me to say?” “You didn’t put any urgency into the order, did you?” “What for? It was pure routine.” Powell sighed. ‘Well, it can’t be helped now – but we’re in a fine fix.”

– Isaac Asimov, “Runaround” (1942)

Abstract

Language-enabled robots with moral reasoning capabilities will inevitably face situations in which they have to respond to human commands that might violate normative principles and could cause harm to humans. We believe that it is critical for robots to be able to reject such commands. We thus address the two key challenges of when and how to reject norm-violating directives. First, we present research in both engineering language-enabled robots that can engage in rudimentary rejection dialogues, as well as related HRI research into the effectiveness of robot protest. Second, we argue that how rejections are phrased is important and review the factors that should guide natural language formulations of command rejections. Finally, we conclude by identifying relevant open questions that will further inform the design of future language-capable and morally competent robots.

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Notes

  1. Video of the interaction can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tu4H1g3CtE

  2. Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkAAl7ERZPo

  3. Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YxmdpS5M_s (Note: The underscore in the URL may not copy and paste correctly).

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Funding

Portions of this work were supported by a U.S. Army Research Laboratory contract award to the second author. Portions of this work were supported by a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded to the first author. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and should not be taken to reflect any official policy or position of the United States Government or the Department of Defense. This work was also funded in part by Air Force Young Investigator Award 19RT0497, and by NSF Grants IIS-1909847, IIS-1849348, and IIS-1723963.

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  1. Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, 4555 Overlook Ave SW, Washington, DC, 20375, USA

    Gordon Briggs

  2. MIRRORLab, Department of Computer Science, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO, 80401, USA

    Tom Williams & Ryan Blake Jackson

  3. Department of Computer Science, Tufts University, Medford, MA, 021555, USA

    Matthias Scheutz

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  1. Gordon Briggs
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Correspondence to Tom Williams.

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Briggs, G., Williams, T., Jackson, R.B. et al. Why and How Robots Should Say ‘No’. Int J of Soc Robotics 14, 323–339 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-021-00780-y

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