From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Jul 02 1998 - 01:30:19 MDT
Hara Ra <harara@shamanics.com> writes:
> Asimov invented the Three Laws as a device by which conflicts could be
> created for his robot stories. A case of simple statements leading to
> impossibly complex results.
I think this was the greatest success of his robot stories: he managed
to show how three apparently simple and logical rules could produce
very complex and unexpected results. In many ways Asimov was before
his time in this respect.
> So, what if a robot has this choice:
>
> Kill someone, and allow 100 others to live, or
> not kill, and allow the 100 others to die.
>
> This would probably immobilize the robot, which is the worst choice,
> so the Zero'th Law is:
>
> 0. A robot, when faced with a choice which results in harm,
> chooses the one resulting in the least harm.
OK, I see the reasoning now. Of course, it took some pretty smart
robots to come up with this, as far as I can remember it was just
Griscard (?) and Daneel who suceeded.
> Implied is that this Law overrides the other three; that the phrase
> "except when in conflict with the Zero'th Law" is added to the first
> 3 Laws.
This suggests a loophole in the original laws, that you can add higher
level laws derived from the others, which was probably not intended by
the human designers. Another unexpected feature; I can really
understand why Susan Calvin decided to become a robot psychologist.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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