Comments on: Isaac Asimov: The Three Laws of Robotics

By: Japanther

Japanther — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:57:58 +0000

Nobody’s perfect.

By: Framtonm

Framtonm — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:35:56 +0000

Sundog,
Oh…OK Thanks. It’s been quite a few years since I read them.

By: What I did May 6th - Eddie Current

What I did May 6th - Eddie Current — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:23:58 +0000

[...] Isaac Asimov: The Three Laws of Robotics — 12:02am via Google Reader Been thinking about the three laws and variants a lot lately, so [...]

By: Yoder

Yoder — Wed, 06 May 2009 04:56:25 +0000

I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.

But they cannot make me watch that Will Smith movie again.

By: Elemenope

Elemenope — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:21:42 +0000

Ah, yup. Some folks read into it that Asimov was launching a criticism of deontology (rules-based ethics), but I think personally he was just playing with a fun plot device.

By: rodneyAnonymous

rodneyAnonymous — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:17:42 +0000

I thought the point of the laws was to have holes that create interesting plot circumstances.

By: Sundog

Sundog — Wed, 06 May 2009 01:25:35 +0000

No, not really. “The Caves of Steel” is a pretty straightforward murder mystery, complicated by the interaction of two highly incompatible cultures. The Will Smith movie is more of a projection of themes from all of the Robot books.

By: MV

MV — Wed, 06 May 2009 01:21:32 +0000

I love the Assimov books, but I think it is fairly easy to puncture a hole in the 3 laws.

1) The best way to prevent humans from coming to harm is to prevent them from doing anything.

It balloons from there, but that interpretation of the first law allows for robot domination of mankind.

By: Framtonm

Framtonm — Tue, 05 May 2009 22:38:41 +0000

I thought the movie was based on Asimov’s “Caves of Steel”, albeit loosely?

By: Andersson

Andersson — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:46:24 +0000

Well how aggressive can they be? Alot of countries out there have nukes and the ones that don’t still have CNN, Al-Jazeera and the internet so what will really change?

By: Elemenope

Elemenope — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:31:19 +0000

The film was simply nothing like this. It was just ‘robots are scary and can kill’. Pretty much the opposite of the point of the book.
I,Robot (the film) = I,Candy and not much more.

Were we watching the same movie?

By: Custador

Custador — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:20:10 +0000

Nope. A robot would be smart enough to know that a little congregated bunch of cells is not a human being, so wouldn’t give a stuff about abortion.

By: Run

Run — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:53:04 +0000

The three laws of robotics annoy me because they are stupendously vague. They need to define terms to be useful. Just take the first one for example – a robot programmed to “never, through inaction, allow a human to come into harm” would be constantly busy, preventing abortions the world over, either by pushing legislation to make it illegal or actively kidnapping women as they walk into an abortion clinic and holding them captive for 9 months (that is, if every robot in the world hadn’t already decided to spend all its time researching cures for every possible disease). And there’s no mention of risk: a human swimming is at a higher risk of drowning than a human on land, so robots might decide to go around dragging people out of swimming pools.

Robots are not going to run on “common sense”, so the rules you give them have to be *absolutely* specific. Especially if human life is involved.

By: Francesc

Francesc — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:53:41 +0000

What would be the difference, then, between sending the robots and playing an online game war? I mean, stop wars and let them be only simulated ones!!

I know, too naïve, but i couldn’t avoid saying it

By: Japanther

Japanther — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:09:27 +0000

oops that story about the robot who wants to learn how to write was from ‘Gold’, not I,Robot. I haven’t read those books in 15 years, my bad. Point still stands though.