OK, it’s been too long. So, I thought this story was worth the effort.

Science Daily had a story about two guys who rewrote Asimov’s 3 laws of robotics. See
Science Daily

They basically tried to bring the laws into the present and into the real world. I did not have a positive reaction and I’d like to explain why.

Asimov’s first laws:

  • A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  • A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  • A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

And the three new laws by Woods and Murphy:

  • A human may not deploy a robot without the human-robot work system meeting the highest legal and professional standards of safety and ethics.
  • A robot must respond to humans as appropriate for their roles.
  • A robot must be endowed with sufficient situated autonomy to protect its own existence as long as such protection provides smooth transfer of control which does not conflict with the First and Second Laws.

They certainly lost the beauty of the original, but they were trying to be real so I appreciate their effort.

However, the first revised law is not for or about robots, it’s about humans. Their first new law is more appropriately part of a “3 Laws for Robotic Researchers” that someone should write. And the language is PC and essentially worthless. “highest” has no objective value since “high” can not be measured. It’s equivalent to saying the researcher must be a good guy or he should not create robots. Maybe law one could be rewritten as “A robot must implement only approved behaviors … “, but that would make the law impractical.

Law number two is appropriate for robots but they are required to have as much judgment as an adult human to evaluate the fitness of a human who gives them orders. I guess that can be simplified to the robot must only obey a human who can provide adequate ID or a secure command key. Asimov said “Obey humans”. The new law says “Obey only privileged humans.”

Automobiles have been abiding by law number two for the last 80 or 90 years, and automobiles kill about 50,000 Americans a year. If you put an AI mind into all cars, Asimov’s laws would shut down the transportation system. Whereas, this new law would allow cars to operate, provided someone in authority said the robots were trying very hard not to kill anyone.

Their third law says a robot MUST be capable of self protection but not so protective as to disobey their key holders or to corrupt their own operating system parameters that make them meet the “highest legal and professional standards of safety and ethics”. They ignore Asimov’s first law, which was the point of the whole thing after all.

So I can’t build robots without some minimum capability of self protection? Why?

I would like to see a real set of rules for robots but they would have to be written in terms that applied to the situation. Asimov succeeded because he avoided the details of how to implement the rules. If you are going to get serious, the rules need to be in terms of behavior of the robot that anyone can measure.

I wonder if robots will do any better than humans at obeying rules when they are motivated to reach goals, just as we are, that lie outside of acceptable behavior. Any mind will do what seems best given all available inputs. If you screw around with “what seems best” you can get any behavior under the sun. Literally.