Designed to Cooperate: A Kant-Inspired Ethic of Machine-to-Machine Cooperation

Cooperation should be the default setting for autonomous machines: The paper argues that self-driving vehicles, robots, and other autonomous systems sharing public spaces should be programmed to cooperate first, then consider other options only if cooperation fails—similar to how we expect humans to cooperate in shared environments.

Cooperation improves efficiency and resource management: When autonomous machines are designed to cooperate with each other, they can better manage shared resources like parking spaces, roads, and sidewalks, leading to improved overall system performance and reduced conflicts.

"Cooperative-by-design" should be as fundamental as privacy and security: Just as engineers now build privacy and security into systems from the start, the paper contends that cooperation should be an equally important design principle embedded into autonomous systems from their inception, not added later.

Machine cooperation mirrors human social norms: The paper draws on Kantian ethics to argue that designing machines to be cooperative aligns with how humans view cooperation favorably in society—making cooperative machines not just functionally better, but ethically more aligned with human values.

Separate ownership creates cooperation challenges: Because autonomous systems are owned by different parties with potentially conflicting interests, deliberate design choices are needed to ensure they prioritize cooperation in shared public spaces rather than defaulting to self-interested behavior.