Requirements for an Artificial Agent with Norm Competence

Human behavior is frequently guided by social and moral norms, and no human community can exist without norms. Robots that enter human societies must therefore behave in norm-conforming ways as well. However, currently there is no solid cognitive or computational model available of how human norms are represented, activated, and learned. We provide a conceptual and psychological analysis of key properties of human norms and identify the demands these properties put on any artificial agent that incorporates norms-demands on the format of norm representations, their structured organization, and their learning algorithms.