Japanese Robot on Diplomatic Tour

baquiano writes "Inaugurating 21st century diplomacy, Japan's Pime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is visiting Prague this week, accompanied by Honda's experimental humanoid robot, Asimo. According to this story, Asimo even attended the official dinner. Apparently, the Czech Prime Minister Spidla has often been criticized because he's too 'stiff' and 'robot-like.'" Uncomfortable moments aside, it's a fitting tribute, for as stated in the story, the Czech writer Karel Capek was the first to use the term robot.

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EMP it...NOW!

[Meffan]

"Good evening, Prime Minister Spidla," Asimo said. "Pleased to meet you. I am a robot, a goodwill ambassador."

A robot delegate clearly has its advantages. He won't embarrass the host with off-color remarks, or get too tipsy on champagne.

Sadly the robot ambassador was then heard to say "Hand over your flesh, we demand it" before exploding the nuclear bomb in his head. Damn multi-LED faced monsters.

Isaac Asimov

[Dr. Jest]

The robot's name is also an obvious tribute to Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer who gave us the Three Laws of Robotics. I'd think the article would have mentioned that, but I guess the reporter is sadly SF illiterate.

Re:Isaac Asimov

[Anonymous Coward]

The Three Laws of Robotics 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 Law.

From Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D., as quoted in I, Robot. In Robots and Empire (ch. 63), the "Zeroth Law" is extrapolated, and the other Three Laws modified accordingly:

A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Unlike the Three Laws, however, the Zeroth Law is not a fundamental part of positronic robotic engineering, is not part of all positronic robots, and, in fact, requires a very sophisticated robot to even accept it.

Asimov claimed that the Three Laws were originated by John W. Campbell in a conversation they had on December 23, 1940. Campbell in turn maintained that he picked them out of Asimov's stories and discussions, and that his role was merely to state them explicitly.

The Three Laws did not appear in Asimov's first two robot stories, "Robbie" and "Reason", but the First Law was stated in Asimov's third robot story "Liar!", which also featured the first appearance of robopsychologist Susan Calvin. (When "Robbie" and "Reason" were included in I, Robot, they were updated to mention the existence of the first law and first two laws, respectively.) Yet there was a hint of the three laws in "Robbie", in which Robbie's owner states that "He can't help being faithful, loving, and kind. He's a machine - made so." The first story to explicitly state the Three Laws was "Runaround", which appeared in the March 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

Information borrowed liberally from the Isaac Asimov FAQ.

Just like the Japanese

[grug0]

Soon they'll be churning out small, cheap, efficient politicians that will take the jobs of American politicians. Washington will end up like Detroit.

We must stop them now!

[Anonymous Coward]

But humanoid robots still have only limited uses, like for entertainment or publicity stunts.

Current technology may limit them to diplomatic missions and Al Gore stand-ins, but they won't sit still for long. Soon these abominations may even be able to pull off kids parties! And let me tell you, once they learn secret of making balloon poodles, overlord status will soon follow.

Re:Obvious

[worst_name_ever]

Even if the robots weren't completely autonomous, "messenger bots" would allow, in my opinion, high-level people to travel to unsecured locations safely.

Or, to take your fanciful idea to an even more outlandish extreme, perhaps some kind of device for remote communication could be created, which would allow a person in one place to hold a conversation with another person in a far-off land, without actually dispatching a messenger or postal-letter. By harnessing the power of the electron-current, which as I'm sure you know is many dozens of times swifter than the fastest steam-ship, such tele-phonic conversations could be made possible. And, though it may seem to you, the gentle reader, to be the most outlandish type of science-fiction, perhaps this new tele-phonic science could be used by the captains of industry to contact the everyday citizen in their own homes at a convenient hour, such as at meal-time.

Ah, truly, the wonders of our age shall know no bounds!