A culture of their own? culture in robot-robot interaction

Abstract This paper presents a framework for studying culture in the context of robot-robot interaction (RRI). We examine the claim that groups of robots can share a culture, even independently of their relationship with humans. At the centre of our framework is a recognition that ‘culture’ is a concept that can be defined and understood in many different ways. As we demonstrate, which definition of ‘culture’ one employs has important consequences for the question of whether groups of robots can have their own culture, and what kind of culture they can have. We suggest that this argument has important consequences for robotics from an ethical/legal perspective.