So, the 3 laws of robotics as put forth by Mr Asimov have some pretty resounding flaws. Which he also showed us. I'm just curious, how do you think the laws could be modified to be improved, or is there a different 3 laws that you would put forth?
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SF Bay Area
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Re: The 3 laws
Mon, July 18, 2005 - 8:56 PMOne thing I think could be done is the first law split into two laws:
1) A robot will not cause harm to a human being
2) A robot will not through its inaction allow harm to be done to a human being.
This shows that direct harm is worse then inactive harm, so the theoretical I,Robot scenario that happened in the movie couldn't happen. Thoughts? -
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Re: The 3 laws
Mon, July 18, 2005 - 11:59 PMi managed to block the movie from memory so i really dont remember the situation you're referring to. however i do like the 0th law, added by R. Daneel Olivaw at some point:
A robot may not harm humanity or through inaction allow humanity to come to harm.
It is, of course, problematic, just as much and maybe more than the other laws, but i like the robots evolving and coming up with this idea on their own. i came across a page full of articles criticizing the 3 laws at some point, obviously, i sent my minions to destroy it immediately... -
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Re: The 3 laws
Tue, July 19, 2005 - 5:08 AMThanks Limbo, great comments, though personally I do not like that law, though I respect its intent. This is what leads to robots taking over in the movie. There is no explicit zero law in the movie, but the big robot in the movie decides that human beings harm themselves with war and tons of other things, so it decides it has to take over the world to save humanity from itself in order to not through its own inaction allow human beings to be hurt. And if you place that law above the first law, robots would do it even quicker.
If the needs of the many always outwiegh the needs of the few, robots taking over and managing our lives for us becomes inevitable. Another thing that could help, maybe, is to define what "harm" means. Just physical harm? What about emotional or mental harm? Financial? Is restraining someones freedom harm?
One thing that's great about the 3 laws, is by placing them on "robots" we can analyze the morality of them in ourselves. -
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Re: The 3 laws
Tue, July 19, 2005 - 5:09 AMOh, here are the three laws for quick perusal:
First Law of Robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Second Law of Robotics:A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law of Robotics: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
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Re: The 3 laws
Tue, July 19, 2005 - 5:30 AMactually robots managing the affairs of humanity was not so far from asimov's mind. have you read the 2nd foundation trilogy? not written by asimov himself but takes the story line back to some of asimov's earlier stories - end of eternity.
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Re: The 3 laws
Tue, July 19, 2005 - 5:41 AMNot yet, just got into Asimov. I did just read the Wikipedia entry on the three laws. But yeah, robots regulating humanity was definitely on Asimovs mind, the difference, I think, is that in the movie the robots take over forcefully. Given the zeroth law, I think that takeover would be inevitable.
Wikipedia entry:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thre...f_Robotics -
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Re: The 3 laws
Tue, July 19, 2005 - 10:45 AMIn the book that R. Daneel Olivaw adds the 0th law he also speacks about harming a person feelings. He is able to percive this only beacuse of how advanced his programing and how much time he had spent with humans. No matter what laws are made there will always be the problems of over load or some type of black market prodution robots without the prober programing. Asimov wrote great works of mind expanding fiction. THe only way to find out what will and won't work is through scince. And I belive that Dr. Asimov would agree. -
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Re: The 3 laws
Fri, September 16, 2005 - 6:19 AMWasn't it originally Giskard who developed the 0th law? in The last of the Foundation series R. Olivaw also refers to this. And I'd read I,robot and The complete robot for problems that could occur with the three laws of robotics. Ever since Asmiov came up with it, he was determined to keep proving himself wrong or give examples of loopholes. -
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Re: The 3 laws
Sat, September 17, 2005 - 12:45 AMGiskard thanks the name just won't come to me. I agree with you that Asimov liked to point out that nothing ( not just the 3 laws) is infaulible. But he always fixes it. I can't remeber him ever leaveing a proublem with the three laws unsloved. -
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Re: The 3 laws
Sat, September 17, 2005 - 4:39 AMBut then I could play devils advocate and say that the three laws never covered a fourth which allows robots to disregard some human lives.
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Re: The 3 laws
Sat, September 17, 2005 - 11:18 AMWell, while the first law states that a robot cannot harm a human, it also states that it cannot allow a human to be harmed. The question is that does this imply that a robot can hurt 1 human to prevent two from being harmed?
I dont think that it does, the law states that a robot cannot hurt a human, period. It also cannot allow a human to come to harm, so it would have to do everything it could to prevent the human from harming other humans but without harming that human too.
If you add the zeroth law in, then a robot could hurt a human to prevent harm to humanity. That's kind of scary because then it really matters how the robots defines what harms humanity. -
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Re: The 3 laws
Fri, September 23, 2005 - 7:30 AMThen again, with enough intelligence, thought and applied logic they might not deem us "human" at all.. after all. Think about anything long enough and you can surely take it out of proportion to the non-existantial (example; female orgasms) and if mechanical men are based on humans then im assuming they could twist their positironic minds to reason absolutely any unreasonable conclusion...
I feel like death, forgive me for making no sense. -
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Re: The 3 laws/ Asimov's mission
Thu, December 22, 2005 - 11:11 PMThe laws of robotics symbolise the 50s and 60s attitudes to robots. Now they are simplistic.
Conscience is the idea. Inculcating moral awareness in humans is hard enough. Often Asimov's poor bots used to have to deal with human messiness as the source of their problems.
"To ask if robots can think is like asking if a submarine can swim," someone once said. Likewise, to ask if humans are moral is like asking if a robot can treat people well. The answer depends on how cynical or optimistic you are.
Asimov was an optimist of the best kind - the kind that grows in optimism by investigating flaws in their logic. And the three laws are once of the greatest byproducts of this life mission of investigating flaws in technology in that hopeful spirit.
Paul Bard.
www.gaiawriter.blogspot.org
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