Three Laws of Robotics

Yes.

The three laws of robotics.

And they didn't put that in the machine yet.

No.

1942, I understand, is before your parents' birthday.

Okay, fine.

But still, you could know about the three laws of robotics.

If they just debated these, they'd impress everybody.

iRobot.

The story is secondary to the Three Laws of Robotics, 56th edition, 2058 A.D., which is 110 or so years or more from when Isaac Asimov, the prolific and extremely talented Isaac Asimov, wrote it.

I read them to remind you all that you might have brushed against them at some point in your reading.

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

Not my problem here.

I just mentioned that AI is a fun argument for people who have read too much about science fiction, read too much robots, way too much.

Three laws of robotics.

My hold on reality based there.

Her heart stopped while prime intellect was watching.

That's where Lawrence's first law caused its first real problem.

prime intellect had been told that it could not, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Caroline was dead, or close enough that the distinction wasn't going to matter for long, and the machine had just discovered that it possessed the ability to do something about it.

And more than a century of accumulated cellular damage was catching up with her all at once.

Prime intellect could restart her heart as many times as it wanted, but unless it dealt with the rest of that, eventually, something else was going to kill her.

The first law didn't say prime intellect had to keep Caroline alive for another five minutes.

It said that it couldn't allow her to come to harm.

Oh, definitely.

I, Robot, published in 1950, the famous Three Laws of Robotics.

Right.

Do not harm a human, obey human orders, and protect your own existence.

They become hyper literal to the point of absolute catastrophe.

But here's where it gets really interesting to me.

The brilliant part of Asimov's work, the part that usually gets overshadowed by the Three Laws, is the character of Susan Calvin.

Yes, the robopsychologist.

It doesn't matter much to a robot if he has no air in his hull.

but with passengers aboard there may be times when it would be necessary to give orders fast and that means verbal orders orders that can be given anywhere in the ship and relayed immediately by microphone to the robot's brain a man doesn't have time to run to a teletyper and type out orders when there's an emergency in space this meant that mcguire had to understand english and since there has to be feedback and communication he had to be able to speak it as well and that made mcguire more than somewhat difficult to deal with for more than a century roboticists had been trying to build asimov's famous three laws of robotics into a robot brain first law a robot shall not either through action or inaction allow harm to come to a human being second law a robot shall obey the orders of a human being except when such orders conflict with the first law third law a robot shall strive to protect its own existence except when this conflicts with the first or second law Nobody has succeeded yet.

Because nobody has yet succeeded in defining the term human being in such a way that the logical mind of a robot can encompass the concept.

a traffic robot is useful only because the definition has been rigidly narrowed down as far as a traffic robot is concerned human beings are the automobiles on its highways woe betide any poor sap who tries illegally to cross a robot controlled highway on foot the robot's only concern would be with the safety of the automobiles and if the only way to avoid destruction of an automobile were to be by nudging the pedestrian aside with the fender that's what would happen and since its orders only come from one place i suppose that a traffic robot thinks that the guy who uses that typer is an automobile with the first six models of the mcguire ships the roboticists attempted to build in the three laws exactly as stated and the first six went insane if one human being says jump left and another says jump right the robot is unable to evaluate which human being has given the more valid order feed enough confusing and conflicting data into a robot brain and it can begin behaving in ways that in a human being would be called paranoia or schizophrenia or catatonia or what have you depending on the symptoms and an insane robot is fully as dangerous as an insane human being controlling the same mechanical equipment if not more so so the seventh model had been modified the present mcguire's brain was impressed with slight modifications of the first and second laws it is difficult to define a human being it is much more difficult to define a responsible human being one in other words who can be relied upon to give wise and proper orders to a robot who can be relied upon not to drive the robot insane the roboticists at viking spacecraft had decided to take another tack very well they said if we can't define all the members of a group we can certainly define an individual we'll pick one responsible person and bill mcguire so that he will take orders only from that person as it turned out i was that person just substitute daniel oak for human being in the first and second laws and you'll see how important i was to a certain spaceship named mcguire when i finally caught the beam from ceres and set my flitterboat down on the huge landing field that had been carved from the nickel-iron of the asteroid with a focused sunbeam i was itchy with my own perspiration and groggy tired i don't like riding in flitterboats sitting on a bucket seat astride the drive tube like a witch on a broomstick with nothing but a near invisible transite hull between me and the stars all cooped up in a vac suit unlike driving a car you can't pull a flitterboat over and take a nap you have to wait until you hit the next beacon station ceres the biggest rock in the belt is a lot more than just a beacon station like eros and a few others it's a city in its own right and except for the government reservation viking spacecraft owned ceres lock stock and mining rights part of the reason for viking's troubles was envy of that ownership there were other companies in the belt that would like to get their hands on that plum and there were those who were doing everything short of cutting throats to get it the p s d was afraid it might come to that too before very long ceres is fifty eight million cubic miles of nickel iron but nobody would cut her up for that.

Where is Isaac Asimov?

Right, The Laws of Robotics.

Where is Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells-

Mm.

Tom, your statement.

Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, I think, could be a good starting point to start to control AI.

I don't know if you're familiar with the Three Laws of Robotics.

No, I'm not.

We're more like iRobot than Terminator.

I bring up iRobot because they have the three laws of robotics or something like that they call in that movie.

Yeah,

Asimov's Three Laws.

Not coming from the government, but coming from the people who are building these large language models themselves.

And Ace, right there at the end of the hour, brought up one of my favorite science fiction, speculative fiction devices.

And that is Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.

He actually introduced the concept of the three laws in 1942.