Saturday, July 9, 2016

Asimov's First Law of Robotics Broken


The use of a robot to end the life of the Dallas gunman has started some conversation about robotics. This idea had not occurred to me until I saw a friend's post on a robotic's forum - Asimov's First Law of Robotics has been broken. Here is the Wikipedia article about Asimov's Laws of Robotics.

The Three Laws of Robotics (often shortened to The Three Laws or Three Laws, also known as Asimov's Laws) are a set of rules devised by the science fiction author Isaac Asimov. The rules were introduced in his 1942 short story "Runaround", although they had been foreshadowed in a few earlier stories. The Three Laws, quoted as being from the "Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.", are:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws
This article from Snopes was linked in my friend's post. Then there was this article from The Guardian. I would imagine that more discussion will come from this. I am beginning to see comments on social media already. Still processing this myself...

Thanks for making me think Eric!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The machine that did the killing in this story was not a robot in the sense of Asimov's laws. It was a remote control bomb with a human being guiding and responsible for it's every move.

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