Building Goal Oriented Robots

Congratulations! You've built your first robot. But before letting it out of the robot factory you need to give it some goals to live by. What goals should it have? Let's explore the goals a robot should aspire to.

Adventure Travel Goals

Just like humans, robots should have travel goals to see it's surroundings. Fortunately robots are not limited by biological limitations and can travel where it's too dangerous for humans such as in volcanoes, high mountains and deep underwater. Expect a booming travel industry to emerge for robots with a lot of money to fund their travels.

Friendship Goals

A robot should strive to form friendships with other robots and humans. Friendships with other robots should be easy to form since robots trust each other. However forming a friendship with humans will take much longer as humans do not trust robots. Robots can even fall in "love" as long as they are programmed to simulate such an emotion. Robots should be able to reproduce with other robots and form families. The baby robots would grow using nano replicating materials over time.

Career Goals

Every robot should have a job and a career. For instance a robot may join the Army and go on military missions. Other robots might work as doctors healing the human solidiers damaged by the enemy military robots. Some robots may choose to work as teachers. Less aspiring robots may work as taxi drivers or factory robots. Unemployed robots would get unemployment benefits to maintain a minimum power supply level.

Learning Goals

Robots need to upgrade their skills and learn new things to keep themselves entertained. For instance a robot may decide it's time to ditch playing chess after becoming a Grand Master and start learning to play a musical instrument.

Should robots choose their own goals? Why of course, within reason. Becoming famous? Yes! Stealing money? No! For example if your robot starts to breath fire, ask it why it's displaying this strange new behaviour. Maybe it's just trying to learn a new skill and not something nefarious like world domination.