One Body, Many Masters
The Timely Politics of Domestic Robot Attention
DISEMBODIED DOMESTIC AI
Belongs to everyone in the home
A private assistant per person via voice detection
Separate memory and persona
Infinitely scalable
THE DOMESTIC ROBOT
One body, many owners
One task, one persona at a time
Hard to switch persona for many co-located masters
NEO Home Robot
Apple HomePod
The Inattentive Robot
Not a robot that lacks perception —
One that cannot attend to everyone at once.
“To help one person is to delay another.”
Everything Is Timely
Not a scheduling problem — a problem of situated significance.
IMMEDIATE — a child cries, a pot boils over, an elder falls
SCHEDULED — breakfast, medicine, watering the plants
EMOTIONALLY TIMELY — a teenager wants to talk now
SOCIALLY TIMELY — a guest arrives, an argument escalates
SLOW BUT IMPORTANT — maintaining the home, learning routines
Intervention timing → attention allocation
Six Attention-Conflict Stress Tests
Governance stress-tests, not usability tests — each exposes a different axis of arbitration.
1. Pancakes vs. Homework
convenience vs. time pressure
2. Car Repair vs. Grandpa Falls
emergency override & privacy
3. Parent Command vs. Child Fear
does affective distress count?
4. Family Task vs. Street Stranger
private ownership vs. public duty
5. Clashing Personas, One Room
it cannot fork into private streams
6. Preference vs. Protection
autonomy, consent, care paternalism
Pancakes vs. Homework
convenience vs. time pressure
Car Repair vs. Grandpa Falls
emergency override
Parent Command vs. Child Fear
does affective distress count?
Family Task vs. Street Stranger
private ownership vs. public duty
Clashing Personas, One Room
it cannot fork into private streams
Preference vs. Protection
autonomy, consent, care paternalism
Toward Attention Protocols
When a family brings a robot home, what priority should be set?
Attention protocols = explicit, revisable, contestable schemes for allocating care, urgency, ownership, vulnerability, and public duty in situated time.
Who can claim attention?
On what grounds?
With what right of appeal?
Revisable by whom?
Not algorithms — governance objects families can adopt, contest, and rewrite.
(Tronto 2013; Weil 1951; Winner 1980)
Botao Amber Hu · TimelyAI Workshop · CHIWORK 2026 · Linz, Austria
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�As Researcher (https://botao.hu)
A Social Computing PhD Candidate at University of Oxford. ��Interests:
Decentralized AI
Machine Behavior
Protocol Studies
Artificial Life
As Designer (https://reality.design)
An Experiential Futures designer at Reality Design Lab.
Interests:
More-Than-Human Design
Speculative Design
Mixed Realtiy Design
Botao ‘Amber’ Hu