Position: Human-Robot Interaction in Embodied Intelligence Demands a Shift From Static Privacy Controls to Dynamic Learning

Abstract

The reasoning capabilities of embodied agents introduce a critical, under-explored inferential privacy challenge, where the risk of an agent generate sensitive conclusions from ambient data. This capability creates a fundamental tension between an agent's utility and user privacy, rendering traditional static controls ineffective. To address this, this position paper proposes a framework that reframes privacy as a dynamic learning problem grounded in theory of Contextual Integrity (CI). Our approach enables agents to proactively learn and adapt to individual privacy norms through interaction, outlining a research agenda to develop embodied agents that are both capable and function as trustworthy safeguards of user privacy.