  This position paper highlights an ethic of machine-to-machine cooperation and
machine pro-sociality, and argues that machines capable of autonomous sensing,
decision-making and action, such as automated vehicles and urban robots, owned
and used by different self-interested parties, and having their own agendas (or
interests of their owners) should be designed and built to be cooperative in
their behaviours, especially if they share public spaces. That is, by design,
the machine should first cooperate, and then only consider alternatives if
there are problems. It is argued that being cooperative is not only important
for their improved functioning, especially, when they use shared resources
(e.g., parking spaces, public roads, curbside space and walkways), but also as
a favourable requirement analogous to how humans cooperating with other humans
can be advantageous and often viewed favourably. The usefulness of such
machine-to-machine cooperation are illustrated via examples including
cooperative crowdsourcing, cooperative traffic routing and parking as well as
futuristic scenarios involving urban robots for delivery and shopping. It is
argued that just as privacy-by-design and security-by-design are important
considerations, in order to yield systems that fulfil ethical requirements,
cooperative-by-design should also be an imperative for autonomous systems that
are separately owned but co-inhabit the same spaces and use common resources.
If a machine using shared public spaces is not cooperative, as one might
expect, then it is not only anti-social but not behaving ethically. It is also
proposed that certification for urban robots that operate in public could be
explored.
