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Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS

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bluehinter
05/19/09

In reply to Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS
My favorite exception to Asimov's rules was one that he came up with himself for the pilot episode of the 1988 TV series 'Probe.'

+ Watch video

The AI in this story controls the entire city's infrastructure, and is programmed to always act in the best interest of humanity... which apparently involves killing lots of homeless people.

Of course, everybody is scratching their heads about how a computer programmed to protect it's citizens could possibly want to harm them, but brilliant scientist Austin James finally figures it out... The computer has found religion!!

While monitoring tv and radio signals, it has been listening to the local televangelist, and now knows that people go to "a better place" when they die. The city is overcrowded, and it's population stand in the way of progress, so why not kill two birds with one stone? Anyone you kill goes to heaven, leaving our good old AI to get on with it's secondary function of keeping the city running smoothly and eliminating waste.

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Pope John Peeps II
05/19/09

In reply to Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS
You don't arm a Reaper drone with a Hellfire missile or put a machine gun on a MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System) not to cause humans to come to harm. That is the very point!

Uh..... Isn't a reaper drone a DRONE and not a robot? Robots are defined as pilotless automatons, and drones are merely piloted by remote control, right?
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GiovanniGautham
05/19/09

In reply to Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS
The whole point to Asimov's 3 Laws was that humans could not see the conclusion such laws would lead to. It's the same conclusion found in old science fiction warnings of the era about society seeking Utopian futures. Perfect rules, perfect laws and a perfect Utopia equal absolute loss of freedom.
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Pope John Peeps II
05/19/09

@GiovanniGautham: Hi there. The failure of a Utopian system is called a DYStopia. There's a whole category of literature. A perfect Utopia is still a perfect place. Nice try.
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outsdr
05/18/09

In reply to Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS
Robots = Awesome

John Goodman = Sexy Hot

Robots + John Goodman = Awesome sexy hot metallic goodness!
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AbrahamMunippus
05/18/09

In reply to Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS
You guys realize you are arguing about a BOOK that by it's very nature can't explain EVERYTHING unless the author want's NOBODY to read it?

If you seriously need every tiny detail spelled out in your books about a "concept" that could be real but take a LOT of details to work out, maybe you shouldn't be reading?
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madog
05/18/09

@AbrahamMunippus: WHY are YOU yelling so SPORADICALLY?
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slrman
05/18/09

In reply to Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS
Why this article is BS. First of all, Azimov's stories are about self-aware robots with an electronic brain that has yet to be built. Second, they ARE stories and so whatever IA decided could be possible was done.

Third, the writer is far too stupid to catch on to the first two. Too bad a lot of others can't figure it out, either. So one more time, there were FICTION! Science Fiction at that, so find something real to bitch about.
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Brian Lam
05/19/09

@slrman: I believe that's exactly what he said.
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Gann
05/18/09

In reply to Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS
A robot with these rules is weaker than a robot without these rules.

Darwinism > Asimov's laws.
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radiomouse
05/18/09

In reply to Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS
I don't have a complete understanding of it, but Law Two seems inherently problematic. To open up direction to all humans seems...well, illogical. "Robot, open my can of soda." "No, robot, do not open up his can of soda." And now, just because your roommate hates your Fanta addiction, your robot has a paradox that will fry its circuits. So a limitation on which humans the robot accepts directives from seems to make more sense. Possibly a set of cascading privileges, like, "Accept direction from creator but accept direction when this does not conflict with original directive."

Either way, it only takes one bad egg before the robot revolution is upon is, and by then Fanta will be the least of our troubles.
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ripfire
05/18/09

@radiomouse: In a way, you could use it to play a prank on a friend while he's sleeping.

"Mr. Robot, you have to help my friend! He's been having kidney problems and unless you surgically remove it, he will die!"
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Lite: hates Illinois Nazis
05/18/09

In reply to Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS
I'm sorry, but until Robots are truly capable of thinking cognitively for themselves, they're going to do whatever they're programmed to so (unless they glitch) and go on some screwed up rampage.

Oh, in your robot on robot war. Don't forget Aimee from Mission to Mars.
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Kaiser-Machead
05/18/09

@Captain Chaos Lite: Actually, it was AMEE, and in Red Planet.
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Lite: hates Illinois Nazis
05/18/09

@Kaiser-Machead: Yes that. I keep getting it mixed up w/ that damn piece of crap that came out w/ that patchuli-stick motherfucker from High Fidelity.
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Pnizzle - I am your father.
05/18/09

In reply to Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS
"Rules were made to be broken." would not apply unless they are AI robots... in which you can still apply universal laws. For example humans normally dont injure other humans unless there is a disorder of some sort. In a "perfect" robot this disorder would not exists so even in AI robots you can somehow put in human ethics (of course when the technology allows us).
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Pnizzle - I am your father.
05/18/09

@pnizzle: and as for instating the laws into program not too hard:

if object has 2 arms, 2 legs, heartbeat, moving

then: do not kill it.
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radiomouse
05/18/09

@pnizzle: eh, but then you have to program algorithms to distinguish arms on a human from arms on a cactus or the legs of a tripod. Moving maybe not so much, or Uncle Ted in the iron lung is screwed. Heartbeat...sure, sounds good. But what is considered a heart? If Mad Scientist X implants his robots with a pulsing bladder of warm fluid, does this mean his robots are immune to "moral" robots? Still a challenge to even define human.
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ripfire
05/18/09

@pnizzle: Those are stupid laws. A lot of what we do as humans involves risk. We put those laws into robots and our entire civilization would be put to sleep by robots.
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Pnizzle - I am your father.
05/18/09

@radiomouse: well the thing to consider as i mentioned in my previous post is that the time that we are worried about Asimov's laws we already have discovered ways to do things. Like i can imagine for example that by that time we will all be labeled with a extreme security rfid. Maybe the robots cannot attack/harm rfid's that start with a certain number. My argument is not the specifics but that it can be done....
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Pnizzle - I am your father.
05/18/09

@ripfire: is there any proof to your statement other then a couple of movies that you watched?
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ripfire
05/18/09

@pnizzle: Movies? What are you talking about? It's simple logic.

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Negligence is an act of harm towards humans and that idea alone can lead to big problems.

What robots need is common sense and that is something you cannot simply put into words.
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radiomouse
05/18/09

@pnizzle: Definitely, but this is a super tricky area that can't be wiped over with broad statements like, "so even in AI robots you can somehow put in human ethics", because the ethics themselves must be evaluated by the robots (assuming they do have AI, because ethics implies the translation of concepts to everyday actions, otherwise they are just rules which CAN be programmed into a robot).

So we have a robot that must evaluate a set of concepts given to it by its creator. In evaluation of any of those laws, the robot must define for itself the definition of the words "robot" and "human", and in such cases the above mentioned requirements most likely won't be good keystones of judgment: robots also might be anthropomorphic and have arms and legs, movement is extremely transient, and what does define a heart? And if the AI can handle this, then does it begin to consider the overarching principles of the morals: humans are entities with self-aware conscious. Which means robots are humans.

As soon as we have artificial intelligence capable of adhering to a code of ethics, we have created consciousness, at which point all the rules are up for reassessment.

But mostly I think people are just picking on your second post, which seems to attempt to simplify/gloss over a huge problem with a set of arbitrary factors that most likely wouldn't work out.
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Pnizzle - I am your father.
05/18/09

@radiomouse: I understand your point... the difficulty is with abstract language and it will require millions of different scenarios to be coded into it but we usually do it in 12 years alone. Haha and yes my second post did undermine the difficulty but i attempted to clarify it that in the third post.
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Pope John Peeps II
05/19/09

@pnizzle: The difficulty isn't with language itself, but in how we perceive and understand language both as individual beings and communally as a whole.

It's impossible to call anything intelligent which does not share this sort of faculty, as communication on any level would be impossible. So to be frank, anything with a GENUINE a.i. and not simply a preprogrammed list of scenarios would probably be something that might actually understand the laws of robotics as simply stated in english.
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Pwnerjam3.0
05/18/09

In reply to Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS
blasphemy
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weatherman
05/18/09

@Pwnerjam3.0: Exactly. Point; missed.
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Hello Mister Walrus
05/18/09

In reply to Asimov's Laws of Robotics Are Total BS
There is nothing in those laws prohibiting sex bots, which is good since ultimately, we know robotics technology will converge to that.
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ripfire
05/18/09

@Hello Mister Walrus: Unless it involves death by snu snu.
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