While industrial robots have been in service for a while, household robots have largely been limited to floor cleaning machines like the Roomba. But Physical Intelligence has built a robot that seems capable of doing some household tasks such as folding clothes. While a viable commercial products lie in the future, the dangers of household robots should be considered now. I will skip over the usual fear of the robot rebellion in which the machines turn against humans and focus on more likely dangers.
Like a PC or phone, a household robot runs the risk of software errors, glitches and other problems. While having an app crash on your phone or PC can be annoying, this usually does not put you at risk of physical harm. However, a malfunctioning household robot can be a danger. A viable household robot needs to be strong enough to engage in tasks such as cleaning, folding laundry, and moving objects. This entails that the robot will be strong enough to harm humans and pets. If a robot has a software or hardware issue that interferes with its ability to recognize objects and living creatures, it might try to fold a baby’s clothing while the baby is wearing them or mistake a sleeping cat for clothing or trash and put them in the washing machine or garbage can. Even more concerning is a robot designed to prepare food that misidentifies, for example, a human or pet as the meat to be sliced up and cooked for dinner.
Even laying aside such errors, a home can be a complicated place for a robot to operate in, as there will usually be multiple rooms, different types of furniture, different appliances, as well as various people and pets. This means that a household robot could easily become a hazard (or just useless) simply because of an inability to handle such a complicated and changing environment.
To be fair, these challenges can be addressed in various ways. One option is to limit robots to specific tasks and narrow areas of operation. This might require multiple robots in a home, each assigned to a specific area and set of tasks. For example, a knife wielding kitchen robot might have a fixed location in the kitchen and only be able to slice foods placed within a special box. As another example, a laundry robot might be confined to a laundry room. Another way to reduce risk is through programming and hardware safeguards. For example, pets and humans might wear devices that provide household robots with their exact location so they can avoid them. This way the robot would not need to depend on visually distinguishing, for example, a cat from a sweater. While things could still go wrong (the ID tag might fail or fall off your cat’s collar), people are generally willing to accept some risk of injury and death for convenience. After all, any electrical appliance in your home can probably kill you and driving anywhere comes with the risk of injury or death. In addition to concerns about accidental injuries, there is also the threat of intentionally caused harm.
Household robots will almost certainly have online connections. On the one hand, this has many potential benefits such as being able to check in on your robots and taking manual control if, for example, one gets stuck in a corner. On the other hand, if you can access your robots online, that means that bad actors can do so as well, just as can happen today with any connected device. The critical difference is that a connected robot in your house means that a bad actor can gain a virtual physical presence in your home and use your robot in various ways.
It is certain that some people will take control of other peoples’ robots just for fun, to do various pranks such as having a robot move things around or make a small mess. But compromised robots could be used for a range of misdeeds, such as unlocking doors (although connected smart locks are obviously vulnerable), grabbing valuables and tossing them out windows, breaking things, and even attacking people and pets. This threat can be mitigated by good security practices but the only two ways to avoid a compromised robot is to either not have it connected or not have one at all.
As with autonomous vehicles, household robots also raise legal concerns about liability. If, for example, your robot injures a guest, there is the question of who has legal responsibility. On the plus side, household robots will be good for some lawyers as this will create a new, profitable subfield of law.
In closing, while the idea of having household robots seems appealing, their presence would create a new set of dangers, especially if they are connected and can be compromised.