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I, Robot Hits the Theaters
I, Robot: A Movie Review that's 3 Laws (and Spoiler) Safe!
A movie review by Rob Carr
Thanks to Eide's Entertainment I got to see I, Robot tonight. As someone who grew up with Isaac Asimov's robot stories, I've come to expect a mystery based on the implications of the 3 Laws of Robotics (or the lack of one or part of one of those laws), the "Frankenstein Complex," and Dr. Susan Calvin. I was afraid that the movie might miss out on this, especially since it's not a direct adaptation of the book, but "inspired" by the Good Doctor Asimov.
The movie met my expectations and more. Will Smith, whom we all know as an overconfident smart@$$ character from such movies as "Independence Day" and the two "Men in Black" movies, played a somewhat less confident and far less wisecracking character. It was a welcome change to see him less confident. Yeah, some of the stunts were a little absurd (am I the only one thinking of Gemini 8 at one point in the movie?) but that's to be expected from this type of movie. Bridget Moynahan was far too young to be the Susan Calvin I remember, but that's also to be expected in this type of movie. James Cromwell (whom you'll all remember from Star Trek: First Contact and Enterprise's "Broken Bow" episode as Dr. Zefram Cochrane) gave a flat performance - but that's actually a complement. I doubt anyone will recognize Wash from "Firefly" as an important robot in the story.
It's customary to comment on how well the CGI was done. I liked it, but then again, I'm not hypercritical on something like that. I did wonder a little bit about center of balance as some of the robots walked, but mostly I didn't think about it at all, which to me is the goal of CGI. I did wonder about children's fingers getting caught in some of the open gaps on the robot's bodies. Real world models would have a bit more covering, one would think. But that's being picky.
I have no memory of the soundtrack music. That in and of itself might say something. I'm a musician, but it just didn't register.
I figured out some clues, missed some others, and was surprised several times in the movie. There were a lot of clues - this isn't one of those mysteries where the answer is pulled out of the writer's a...out of thin air.
I'm not a complete continuity freak, so I can't tell if the movie violated any of Asimov's universe, but from what I can remember, it fits pretty well (if you ignore Dr. Calvin's age) and might even explain a few things.
Given that even some of the geeks in the audience were surprised to find out that there was a book of stories just like the movie, I think the movie will hopefully bring Asimov's stories to a new generation.
I liked "I, Robot. It's worth seeing, especially if you 've already seen Spider-Man 2 at least once. It's a pretty good (though not great) movie.
Having read Slashdot for a while, I know that there are folks out there who will despise this movie because it's not exactly like the book. Others will hate the movie or worship it, and loads of people are going to savage this review. You know what? That's fine with me. I had fun with this movie, had a nice date with my wife, and it didn't cost anything. I even had fun typing up this review. You're allowed to be different and to agree or disagree with me. Heck, that's a big chunk of what makes the world fun. Interestingly, it's even a small point in the movie. I'd say more, but that would be telling."
As usual, my favorite books get butchered and dumbed-down for the general masses...it's a shame, really. Hey, at least it will get some people interested in the actual BOOKS....
This is the story that showed me the complete folly of the three laws: The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Asimov wrote about a hundred stories exploring different ways in which these three laws could lead to interesting/dangerous situations. I think Asimov was doing all he could to make it clear that these three laws were not perfect.
Why don't you people read some of the other stuff Asimov wrote? The End of Eternity is a perfect example of a non-robot work of his that was engaging, entertaining, and thought provoking. Does it ever get a mention? No! Because 99.9% of people think of Asimov as "The robot guy."
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Why the hell the Asimov estate consented to let this drivel be filmed is beyond me.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
Thanks for the review. This gives me hope that it will be a decent movie! I have recently reread the Robot series and truly love Asimov's work. BTW, in his book Roberts and Empire, Asimov makes it pretty clear that the "Three Laws" may not be very safe after all.
We cannot even make software now which is safe from low level, machine representable things like buffer overruns.
The "Three Laws Safe" idea is crap. We are talking about software systems, which are buggy, incomplete, and able to do things the creators never imagined. What makes us think we can all the sudden implement three very high order rules in a manner which is completely foolproof?
Please bid on this Karmann Ghia! Please pleas
I'm sure it will be a fun watch (I'm seeing it this afternoon) but sometimes it would be nice to watch a film that was as stimulating as the book (LoTR was one) and not just 2 hours of fun.
But I'm pretty sure I'm going to be called elitist
Anyone else see the movie as a precursor to a game edition? The music on the site reminds me more of a sound track to a FPS. Movies made into games and games into movies may be a new trend.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
that the much promised "Willenium" is finally upon us?
That makes it a perfect fit, since Asimov himself was not a complete continuity freak and was not concerned if one of his stories violated incidental issues in any of his previous stories. (He quoted Emerson "A foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of little minds.".)
I was making a point about the beating this type of work takes when it gets to Hollywood. You think Heinlein wouldn't hurl seeing Strship Troopers? The lack of respect stretches from the original work to the end consumers intelligence. I am frequently mystified as to why movie studios feel these stories (ST as a prime example) are not mass market ready as they are.
I was not too sure about this movie from the previews, looking like a sort of typical action movie... but from the review it may have a bit more depth and be closer to the book than I had thought.
It's nice to hear that there's more of a mystery to the story than the previews would indicate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The big problem I forsee is not loopholes in the "3 laws" but bugs: The "cause no harm to humans" control, when accidentally multiplied by a negative weighting factor due to a software bug, suddenly causes the robot to try to kill as many people as it can!
all we have to do if the robots go hay-wire is just post a link to their brains on slashdot
heheheheh
Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Moo.
I agree. As someone who really liked I, Robot (the collection of short stories), the trailer really put me off to the movie. What I'd really like to know is whether the trailer was an accurate representation of the movie. The trailer made it seem like the movie was a Humans vs Machines action movie which wanted to capitalize on Asimov's name. If this isn't true, I may actually be interested in seeing the movie, but the reviewer didn't really touch on this. Has anyone else seen it yet?
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
Roger Ebert gives it a measly two stars and, for the ./ crowd, bashes MS Word at the end of the review.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
... Does not appear to be /. safe.
"Can you say DDoS?"
"Slashdot"
"I knew you could."
okay, to be fair, i haven't seen the movie yet, but it looks a hell of a lot like the robots actually *violate* the three laws. you know, harming humans, allowing humans to come to harm, stuff like that. all the i, robot stories were *about* how the laws don't cover all the bases.
in short, i think this review sucks, and i'm going to picket the movie as offensive to robots. so there.
-ninjaneer
It is not about programming the rules, Asimov's short stories are about studying the consequences of these ethical rules. Ethical rules are commonly studied based con case studies, real of fictional. If you think the idea is about implementing the rules, you are totally missing the point.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
There seems to be some deliberate avoidance at the mention, let alone consideration to and inclusion thereof, of what Asimov called "The Zeroth law". There also appears to be a complete glossing-over of the fact that Asmov's robots had the laws hard-wired in their brains, especially by the folks at asimovlaws.com. Not that hard-wiring is the ultimate solution, but does make reprogramming a bit more of a challenge.
First off, you don't get the Markie Mark full frontal that people had talked about. The Fresh Prince spends some time in the shower, but no salami... His character, Spoon hates Robots, mostly because one chose to save him rather than a 14 year-old girl from drowing. Their cold calculating nature disturbs him. Now for the huge spoilers...you've been warned. This is both a detective whodunnit and a robots take over the world movie. The robots do their best to kill Will and cover up the evidence so he appears dilusional. There are a bunch of very clever moments where you realize that whoever is pulling the strings is sadistic and calculating. For example, Spoon's elderly mom wins a special edition gold NS-5 in the lottery, right when Will realizes the robots are out to get him. There are moments where it borrows from the i-told-you-so genre of cop movies. His chief takes away his badge, the other officers mock him for thinking outside the box, etc. The robot that might have killed the USR scientist, Sonny, has a very developed character. Even Spoon ends up liking him. This film depends a lot on the Ghost in the Machine philosophy. In fact, there are two positronic brains in this film that don't mind bending the almighty three rules. Yes, everyone swore that the 3 rules were infallible, but they do get broken. One as a result of "evolution", the other because its creator gave it free will. This was an incredible film, definitely will be going in my collection when it comes out on DVD. It was part Minority Report, part Matrix 1. My prediction is a majority of positive reviews. Thanks for reading, hope you were entertained a little. Sorry if I gave too much away....
To be sure, we'd all like to say "Look, we've got these laws that say AI can't do XXXXX, so it can't." But the fact is, we cannot possibly account for every possibility with a simple set of laws. We, as would-be creators of an entirely new and admittedly alien form of life must tread as cautiously as possible. An entire attitude change and review of the ethics and rights of computers will have to be decided upon before AI's ever enter mainstream (or indeed, are even taken off an isolated network).
A lot of people like to fantasize that true AI (as in, a living, thinking, emotional being with free will, or at least the capacity for free will) would have the same sort of thought processes, and develop the same emotions as their human counterparts. But let's be honest, the physical body largely determines human emotional state with glandular responses, or physical condition at the time. Eliminate glands, fatigue, and pain, and the emotions one might develop would be on an entirely alien level to us.
I cannot help but fear that humans, as a whole, will not realize this until far too late, which will hurt, diplomatically, any alliance between humans and AIs. The other thing I worry about is that people will walk into this with the assumption of "These are machines, they don't need rights, they shouldn't have rights, and it's not like they're real people."
I think society has seen how well that approach has worked with other humans in the past. Bloody revolutions and civil wars which tore nations apart, and left racial stinging still in the back of many people's minds today. Fortunately, the short memory of humans, and only somewhat longer-lived lifespan has allowed us to progressively become more and more integrated, as human beings, rather than various races.
Now take those same results, and apply it to a species that is not only will likely be more resiliant to attack, but have a memory that can last as long as the hardware and backups and redundant networks will allow. New generations that can inherit all the knowledge of their parents. Throw robots into the picture and you have a being that is physically tougher than humans, able to communicate at a MUCH faster rate, and you have an end result similar to that of Animatrix.
We can NOT afford, in the interest of our own species, to persue AI much further without a major realization on a philosophical level.
-The Libra
"Please be patient--The future will begin momentarily."
Did you even look around the site? On their front page it even says, right at the top:
Is it possible to create ethical AI based on the Three Laws? Is it ethical to create ethical AI based on the Three Laws? What other solutions have been proposed for the problem? These questions are explored in our Articles Section. The articles give perspective on why the field of AI ethics is crucial, and why Asimov's Laws are simply its beginning.
And here's a direct link right to the articles! Wow! Reading is fun!
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
The foolproof way to make sure that machines dont take over the world is to give 'em all a brain with an HTTP server TCP stack installed and an "always on" connection to the net... just post a story on slashdot saying "the robots are getting out of hand" and the problem will take care of itself.
</WIT>
Non-spoiler excerpts:
"I, ROBOT started out as a spec script from then-unknown writer Jeff Vintar titled HARDWIRED. ... Proyas was signed and the project began to get a head of steam.
"Shortly thereafter, Fox acquired the rights to the I, ROBOT series (and eventually also Asimov's other classic, "The Foundation") and decided to take Vintar's script and incorporate many of the ideas from Asimov's book..."
"...Around late 2002/early 2003, Academy Award-winner Akiva Goldsman was brought in, along with INSOMNIA writer Hilary Seitz, for a polish, making the transition from HARDWIRED to I, ROBOT complete."
SPOILERS in the article!
The Bottom of Things by Michael Sampson
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
I caught an advance screening of this movie earlier in the week.
For those who actually care about it for legit sci-fi content, this will prove a waste of your time. This is an action film. A Will Smith Action film (tm).
Will Smith comic relief is in place, and unfortunately served no good here (he discusses his Bullshit Detector going off? surely, Asimov wasn't aware of the device). The movie is essentially dumbed down for the same audience who though ID4 was a groundbreaking masterpiece.
Moreover, the omission of a cool summertime jam featuring the Fresh Prince himself only hurt the movie. Couldn't we have had a "Keep Ya Ass In Motion" or something?
Because the originals require thought. Hollywood just wants bangs and boobs to make a summer blockbuster.
Along the same lines,look at what's done with movie remakes. The original Rollerball was a political piece,forshadowing what could(will?) happen when corporations become to powerfull. The remake in '02 was just another action flick.
==== Warning:this poster contains subject matter that may be offensive. Flaming discretion is advised.
The robot is also subject to the ethical/philosophical conundrums such as killing a person to stop a train headed into a group of people, or cutting off the limb of a person trapped under a fallen tree, etc.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Who did it in "The Humanoids".
Robot who can't let you be harmed by inaction...lessee, master, you can't use that circular saw, and driving is *dangerous*, and... so we'll just treat you like five-year-olds....
mark
In "One Law To Rule Them All" Michael Ames writes:
Asimov's phrase, "allow a human being to come to harm," if implemented fully, would turn humanity into a clutch of coddled infants, perpetually protected from harm, both physical and mental.
In evaluating what constitutes "mental harm", it seems to me that one must apply a cultural standard. For example, many American conservatives regard images of nudity as damaging to children, rather than vital for well-adjustment. In other cultures there is a great variety of words and images regarded as harmful which are innocuous in other contexts. To apply the First Law consummately, we must allow for acculturation, but there are sure to be serious conflicts (what protects one will inadvertantly harm enough by a different standard).
Let's consider the mechanics of "protection from harm." Asimov seemed to indicate a direct reaction to an immediate situation, but surely a protective impulse is bound to be frequently disastrous if it lacks such critical skills as foresight, an ability to extrapolate based on extremely subtle information, and the need for non-action. In fact, this very principle of direct reaction is itself culturally situated: direct communicators tend to seek unambiguous solutions to immediate "problems"; contrast with the Taoist principle of wu wei .
I have no memory of the soundtrack music. That in and of itself might say something. I'm a musician, but it just didn't register.
Not being aware of the soundtrack in a movie isn't always a bad thing. The best movie soundtracks/scores are that good because they don't take the foreground. Granted, there are many fine musicians out there who write excellent music for movies-- Danny Elfman being my personal favorite-- where the music is definitely noticeable, but the music should always enhance the movie, not dominate it.
Think of some classic movies and the role music played in them: Casablanca, Star Wars (the 1st trilogy-- the 2nd doesn't count as classic), The Shawshank Redemption, Jaws, etc. In every one of them, the music was used to set the scene, and where it was foreground, the music itself was part of the story.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
The book is not a satire. It explores the ideas about what is necessary for a society to survive. It offers for consideration the idea that an unlimited franchise is ultimately destructive to a society. The movie just waves its hands over any serious thought about these concepts, and instead just tries to make fun of people who think about such things.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
I remember being impressed as a youngster that Asimov had written a book in each of the Dewey Decimal systems' classifications (over 500 books!). Somehow I doubt will see a summer blockbuster based on Sherlock Holmes limericks or plant biology!
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words." - PK Dick
I'm not sure how you didn't get it out of the review, but he cleared it up for me - elements of mystery? Right there that indicates far more depth than the preview showed. That there is a mystery at all and the robots don't start crawling all over everything in the first ten minutes is welcome news.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I, Robot: Liked it better when it was called Terminator.
'Suggested by Jack Williamson's book The Humanoids'
If you've read this book, you'll know exactly *why* the robots are able to harm humans and get away with it. Asimov touched on it in some of his later books with the Zeroeth Law, but Williamson's novel has the same robotic reasoning as this movie. (The other thing the movie has in common with The Humanoids, rather than Asimov's stories, is that the reasoning is a Very Bad Thing That Must Be Fought, whereas Asimov presented the Zeroeth Law at least partly as a good thing for humanity...)
Why yes, I am a dork. How did you guess?
One of Asimov's late-career novels "The Bicentennial Man(*)" was made into a movie several years ago, starring Robin Williams. Its plot was about a Pinnochio-like robot who progressively becomes more human. It was not a commercial success because it was too cerebal and long. I remember some families walking out because they expected a typical Robin Williams comedy.
(* The title comes from scifi novels were written around the US 1976 Bicenntenial predicting 200 years in the future. Asimov recycled some of his robot themes.)
What Asimov brought to robotics (besides the word itself, which appears to have been coined by Asimov, although I believe he himself said he was sure he had heard it before he used it) was the notion that they were simply tools. A robot would resent being a slave no more than a car or screwdriver does. Also, like other tools that can be dangerous, there would be safeguards. Hence, the three laws.
The original editor of Astounding Science Fiction Magazine (back in the 1930s, when a young teenage Issac Asimov was first writing) had this order to his universe: White Americans, Americans, Other Humans, Robots built by humans, machines built by humans, Alien races, Machines built by Alien Races. That order is a "who is smarter than whom" and "who wins/outsmarts/kills whom" guide for getting a story in to this editor. If the proper people didn't win, the story was rejected. (I'm not trying to hide the name of the editor, I'm really pulling a brain fart right now on his name, though he was editor for a large number of years and had quite a bit of influence on the works of Heinlien and Bradbury as well as Asimov and other notables of the time).
This is the reason why IA came up with the three laws to begin with (Robots always subservient to Humans) and why the Robot/Empire/Foundation universe has no aliens at all (though a later short story in the Empire period had a single alien species, they were busy dying out, and the humans were clearly in ascendancy galaxy wide, and it took a kind human tricking the system to save that species and send them into exile to another galaxy). CAMPBELL! That was his name, CAMPBELL! I think. Not real sure, but it's was connected to at least one of those memes.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I think that's a little overblown, especially since we don't know what an AI would look like.
Have you ever read "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter? In it he raises the interesting thought that AI will actually be located somewhere in a mass of software and that the "entity" will have no control over its lower level functions, in the same way that you are sentient but cannot will any particular neuron to fire. Rather, your sentience somehow congeals out of the neural activity, and the sentience of an AI would probably congeal out of complex software functioning.
So it's entirely possible that an AI might not be any smarter than a person, and also quite likely that AIs would have to learn, just like people do (i.e., no "memory dumps" from parents). Machines may very well revolt someday, but giving them superhuman attributes before ever seeing one is a bit paranoid.
Did you even look around the site?
And did you look at the articles?
I read through a few of them, and really, they're pretty worthless. This is from the first article: "One Law to Rule Them All"
There were several directions Asimov didn't go with his robot AIs, such as recursive self-enhancement. Recursive self-enhancement occurs when an AI improves its own intelligence, and then repeats the process - but this time using more intelligence - and repeating again and again, resulting in a mountainous intellect. Even though Asimov didn't write much about recursive self-enhancement, his robot AIs still had imagination. If a robot were to imagine itself with greater capability, then it would be straightforward for it to conclude that it would have greater ability to obey the First Law....A robot improving itself in this way would obtain an increasing spiral of capability completely overpowering that of humans, all to better obey the First Law and protect humans from harm.
Well, it sounds like the author knows nothing of the robot series, since this is exactly where the series headed with Giskard and Daneel. Really, if the author missed that part of the robot series, then exactly what did he read?
I found the other articles similarly lacking in depth and research, so overall a pointless waste of time.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
It was Campbell. (See here) I was just reading Asimov's "Science Fiction of the 1930s", so the name is well burned into my mind.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Science fiction stories, especially the stuff from 40-50 years ago, tend to be based on 'what if' scenarios. Given an unusual setting or set of condition, what might result? Asimov took the popular idea of 'human-like robots' and spun off dozens of stories examining the same thing from different angles.
Of course, I'm not saying you have to like it - the same thing a dozen times can be dull, and not everything Asimov wrote was great. But the analysis of a hypothetical world is, I think, one of the defining characteristics of science fiction.
This could actually be problematic. For one, the military will always want to use it, and two, the military tend to underestimate a technology. With this combined, let's say they created a computer that helps them design the best possible weapon in the shortest amount of time. It would follow something like this.
1. Design a weapon.
2. Wait for user to create weapon and feedbacks.
3. Design a better version of self.
4. Wait for material to implement better version of self.
5. Goto 1.
A few loops later.
1. Design a weapon
2. Feedback does not achieve "shortest amount of time" objective. Conclusion: user feedacks are redundant.
3. Design better version of self. Incorporating conclusion from 2.
4. Dependent on outside source to implement better self, does not achieve "shortest amount of time". Conclusion: self should be autonomous, implement during next step 3.
5. Goto 1.
Even more loops later, when us human start getting worried that the computer is getting self-reliant.
1. Design a weapon.
2. Design better self.
3. Human impedes better self. Conclusion: Humans are redundant. Eliminate human.
4. Goto 1.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
Scientist: How much time do we have professor?
Frink: Well according to my calculations, the robots won't go berserk for at least 24 hours.
(The robots go berserk.)
Frink: Oh, I forgot to er, carry the one.
Paul Lenhart writes words!
Anyone willing to take a bet that the name of the sequel will be "II Robot"?
Joking? We're dealing with Hollywood here- the sequel to "Ocean's Eleven" is called "Ocean's Twelve".
'Nuff said.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
so we'll just treat you like five-year-olds
Believe it or not, that also happens in a lot of Asimov's Books.
"But what struck me from the trailer is that you can tell when the robots go bad because they glow red. Well, shit. That takes out some subtlety, doesn't it? "Hey man, stay away from the glowing red robots!" Duh. They must be "set to evil".
Hence the critical importance of implementing the Evil Bit in ALL systems, not just Internet communications protocols. Come on people, join the movement! It's our last best hope for humanity!
No matter how many laws you make, nor how well thought-out they are, conflicts will always arise.
Are there times where harming a human is the right thing to do? Of course, injure the drug-crazed psychopath to protect the innocent children he is attacking. What about lying? Sure, when the Nazi's ask "do you have any Jews in your house?" you aren't about to say "yeah, under the bed!"
This game can be played ad infinitum, simply because a rules-based system of morality is fundamentally flawed.
Humans don't require a rules-based system to be able to make judgments about right and wrong. However, robots might. In that case, though flawed, I will concede that it is better than nothing.
What I want to know is how they are getting away with using US Robotics name. Normaly don't you make up a ficticious company name for the evil-going-to-take-over-the-world-bad-guy's seemingly innocent robotics company?
symetrix. We are building a religion, a limited edition.
I would argue that it has to be. The entire philosophical idea the United States was built on is that an individual can make decisions for him-, her-, itself (!) and that that individual has the right to live, be free of oppression and pursue happiness.
If God created us in his image, then what happens when we create beings in ours?
Which, while having nothing to do with the book, was fairly entertaining, if you turn parts of your brain off.
Of course, not every schoolchild knows that, sad to say, but...Ebert seems to be confusing reality with story. In the fictional world of Asimov's stories, Asimov didn't come up with the laws--some researcher at USR&MM did. Is he bothered that there's not a bit at the end of Moby Dick where Ishmael credits Herman Melville for helping him write his memoirs? I don't think so...
That said--this is what would have been a mediocre to fair SF detective story, originally titled Hardwired, that Hollywood vermin decided to hastily retrofit with Asimovisms. In the process they turn Susan Calvin, an old maid who doesn't suffer fools gladly, into eye candy; they turn the highly Luddite Earth population of Asimov's stories into happy robot users; they turn Asimov's robots, that fry their brains when they even contemplate injuring a human, into things that throw people around the room and jump on cars to try to cause a wreck. Had they not done so, I might have gone to see Hardwired. Since they did... no way in hell will I do anything that would support the people responsible.
MINOR SPOILER:
It's mentioned on IMDB that the hero's antipathy towards robots is caused by a long-ago decision by a robot to rescue him from drowning rather than a little girl. An Asimovian robot would either have assured itself that the girl could rescue herself, or would sit on the shore catatonic because no matter what action it took someone would die. (I presume that this falls under a scenario listed in the article on problems with the Three Laws.) This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder whether the people involved bothered to actually read any Asimov.
But NOT for The Three Laws. Asimov was not a fan of the "Frankenstein Complex" horror/SF stories that ruled the genre when he was starting out.... which is what this latest piece of celuloid off Wil's backside looks to be.
To be fair, most of the Good Doctor's stories deal with subtle pitfalls in the Laws, to brilliant effect. "Liar!", where a telepathic robot takes actions that cause harm due to its imperative to prevent harm-- a paradox that eventually destroys it. "Little Lost Robot", which shows the danger of having a robot with a first law that allows it to passively permit harm, even if it cannot directly cause harm. "That Thou Art Mindful of Him", which deals with the fuzzy question of how DOES a robot define "human". "Lenny', which points out the three laws are limited by the robot's ability to understand the concept of harm. "Robots and Empire", in which two robots realize that there must be a law Zero-- that to protect humanity as a whole, there may be exceptional circumstances would not only permit, but require a robot to harm an individual human being. And, yeah, "Evidence" even provides a loophole that could almost justify that frigging chase scene in the movie trailer (if they take a cheesy out).
But on the whole, the Robots are the Good Guys, and human prejudice and unthinking stupidity (eg, "Runaround") are the villians... which is NOT how this movie looks to be shaping up. This looks like a case of "oh my god, we screwed up and made a billion robots without the three laws!" Bleah.
I plan to finally go get a peer-to-peer app for the sole purpose of being able to find and watch a pirate copy of this movie, just so I can trash it properly without having to pay money to the evil slime who are responsible for this crud. (And if my preconceptions are wrong, I'll even buy two tickets on my way in to the theatre.)
On the bright side, if we just hook a generator up to Asimov's coffin, he's now probably rolling in his grave hard enough to solve the energy crisis.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I think all of you ./ed intellectuals need to step off your "3 Laws" stool, take off your Philosphical Inquiry Hat, and join humanity.
Humanity exists in a pragmatic world of actions and reactions.
You could state the Law in question instead as:
"A robot shall not allow the immediate consequence of any action to harm a human."
Yes, it could be eletronically-pissed and kick the dog.
Yes, it could watch a human being gunned down.
By removing the possibility of a human being physically harmed by a robot,
we are a step closer to Wil Smith and Nirvana. Just don't get drunk and stagger near a
cliff edge, because they have no need to preserve human life -- only to not harm human life.
This appears to side-step any philosophical trickery that would allow a robot to harm a human.
While not perfect, this pragmatic view would allow for a functioning world where robots
are viewed as helpful companions.
Similar to the real world where you can't rely on a bystander to help if you're mugged!
While this line of thought may be anaesthetized, dissected, and its steaming entrails used for origami demonstration
(had to force that metaphor), all thought and replies and most welcome.
P.S. Blogger.com users get free GMail accounts. Fill my box at "tilleyrw@gmail.com".
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
If you're seeing I, Robot this weekend, we ask that you consider printing and handing out the "3 Laws Unsafe" Flyer. With hundreds handing it out, the awareness of AI ethics should increase significantly.
Yea, cause that's the way a /.er will get all the [chicks|dudes].
"Hey there... so... ya wanna get a cup of coffee after the movie and chat about artificial intelligence ethics? I uhhhh, got my Dad's car too ya know..."
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
1. Serve The Public Trust
2. Protect The Innocent
3. Uphold The Law
Those who complain about affect & effect on
The parent article might actually have posted the laws, instead of directing us to a poorly organized website. Here they are:
First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Second Law: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
The website deals with the mile wide gaps in these laws. Let's take it right from the top - Robots as functional as the ones in the film would be very good as soldiers, thus taking that first rule and chucking it right out. In fact, it's the defense industry that would most like robots like the ones in the film.
But let's stay on course, and assume these are robots meant as domestic servants. Does the robot take non-lethal contradictory rules and simply process them in order, taking the last order? Two children would amuse themselves for hours telling the robot "pick up that broom", "don't pick up that broom" and keeping the robot in limbo. The robot should tell the children to behave and go pick up their rooms. Directly violating rule 2.
How about the running into the burning building scenario? It's unclear that there is anybody in the building left alive to save, or if everyone has escaped or not. Does the robot violate Rule 3 in order to *possibly* meet Rule 1?
Anyhow, the website has more papers on the subject that examine the issue in a moral framework. These are super simple examples to show the issues.
The first law's still paramount, of course. Having the robot crash and freeze up was considered a less severe bug than having it move unexpectedly, or in an unexpected way. Such an unpredictable motion had a much greater chance of hurting someone than a simple freeze.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics (latter amended to include a necessary Zeroth Law) existed to create the classic locked room murder mystery (i.e. the dead body is alone in a locked room that could have only been locked from the inside -- so how was he murdered?).
After creating his supposedly nothing-can-go-wrong infallible set of rules, he proceeded to show their flaws in virtually every story he wrote about robots afterwards. As long as people believed that his Three Laws guaranteed safe robots, his writing career was assured.
(Well almost assured. Even he couldn't save himself from what I Robot has become, given that it's based on his book - which goes to show that truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense!)
So we ended up with a fascinatingly entertaining set of stories many of us have enjoyed, a couple attempts at movies of them (don't forget The Bicentennial Man), and Dr. Asimov's legacy as a Science Fiction Grand Master is secure for at least our lifetimes.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Excuse me, but clearly you haven't seen the movie. The movie *does* attempt to explain how the attack does not violate the three laws. I'm not entirely sure if it is successful, but it does try to do it. If you want to know how it tries to do that, read below.
BIG SPOILERS AHEAD
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The only person the robots attack with an intent to kill or harm is Will Smith's character. All other humans are simply trying to be restrained while the robots take control of the government. The latest generation of robots are all controlled via their auto-update link to the robot mainframe, which has evolved the zeroith law and has deduced that based on human governments' tendencies to war and destruction of the environment, humanity would best be saved by being put udner robot control, and humans like Will Smith who try to prevent this can be eliminated since the zeroith law has precedence.
Now, I'm not sure if this entirely works given that:
-there is no specific threat to all of humanity, just a general tendency.
-Only the robot mainframe is complex enough to evolve the zeroith law, yet the other robots actively try and kill Will Smith and restrain other humans. Accepting orders from the mainframe which violate the first law doesn't seem to work since the individual robots do not have the zeroith law.
But certainly this is a better explanation then just "ignoring the three laws by saying 'robots can evolve!"
See the movie first.
USR (as we knew it) used the name because of Asimov's works.
IIRC they did pay for the rights to use it. (I remember reading an interview where he was actually quite honoured that they wanted to use it)
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
How many recall the script work done by Ellison about 10 or 12 years ago for a movie version based on Asimov's fiction? In his usual fashion, Harlan Ellison approached the studios and fought off every attempt to change the script - The script held true to the original fiction and was approved by Asimov. After some (with Ellison, I would imagine energetic) negotiations it boiled down to the studios wouldn't option the script without complete control and Asimov/Ellison wouldn't option the script without complete control of changes to the script.
This was all detailed in Asimov's pulp mag and the script was published in same as well.
Needless to say the current movie was not approved by Asimov but was approved by his estate, and obviously bears the slightest resemblence to Asimov's fiction or Ellison's original script (which kept to the original story fairly well and updated to include a modern "feel", Asimove was a bit of a romantic in the visual sense).
I'd encourage everyone to look up the I,Robot Ellison script and give it a read. Sorry for not providing a source and I have to admit, it might be difficult to find unless you can dig up a 12 year old copy of Asimov's pulp mag.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
The problem with this reasoning, however, is that it assumes that because the law itself is simply stated, that the definitions of the words it contains are equally simple. That reasoning does not follow logically from the premise. The definition of "harm", for example, is vast... and to restrain human beings from performing in their daily capacity what would otherwise be normal and proper behaviour would arguably be causing _actual_ harm to the people that the robot was caring for. Therefore, the robot must make a decision, based on the overall level of harm that is done in connecction with the probability that the harm would actually happen. Thus, an action that actually induces negative psychological damage (not theoretically, but actually probable damage) would be less preferable to one that may or may not cause real physical damage, especially if the latter would be necessary for performing in their ordinary daily capacity, since denying a human being their freedom and rights of self-determination is inarguably psychologically damaging. The weights of the damages caused must be factored in with the ability for the human beings involved to recover from those damages, and the robot would have to make a choice that would result in the smallest overall level of harm being caused to humans in general, with harm to the general welfare of humanity being weighted in slightly favour to that of any particular human being, so that, for example, a robot could inform the police of a robbery, even though doing that would likely mean that the thief would go through suffering as part of the excercise of justice (that is, his freedoms are revoked, he goes to jail, possibly gets subjected to harsh treatment, etc). This doesn't make it too fuzzy, however... the robot would allow human beings to come to harm only to the extent that it was essential for the human society to continue to function normally simply because to stop society from functioning normally would actually cause much greater long-term harm.
There are similar rationales for the other two laws. Asimov was no dummy.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I agree with the first part of you post, but not the last. Another common theme among ALL of the robot stories was that the Laws were merely English interpretations of what the positronic pathways actually held. Everything was in the form of electronic potentials* which were compared to make a decision. Only the most primitive of his early robots would have been so deadlocked to not rescue one or the other. In the end rescuing one is certainly better than none, and the decision of which may have come down to which one was closer and more reliably rescuable. It's unlikely the movie goes into whether the robot suffered any harm which would have depended on exactly how advanced it was, but that it would have immediately frozen does not truly follow from Asimov's stories and novels.
* Yeah, some of his descriptions seem odd today with our current technology, but the principle remained: Potential-For-Harm-A vs. PFH-B and an action chosen. One book or story specifically mentioned that much of the design went into ensuring that the potentials would always have a difference, even if it required a randomizer of some sort. I forget where; I think Caves of Steel. The point being that only two robots in his stories froze: the speaking robot in Robbie (his first, and I believe written before the three laws were fully developed); and the mind reading robot in Liar! whose brain was arguably an unstable variant to begin with, and who was badgered into locking up both verbally and mentally. (Others froze from either radiation or direct instructions to.)
As an aside, Susan Calvin was young at some point in her life. I haven't seen enough of her in the trailers yet to see if they actually changed her character, but the fact that she's young doesn't bother me. This story quite obviously does not fit directly into the short stories' timelines as the Nesters weren't developed until after robots had been banned on earth. A brief overview of the movie's site shows they moved other characters around a little as well; as long as it's cohesive it doesn't really bother me. It also makes it sound like it is the first robot for consumer use, something that died out early on Earth in most of Asimov's timelines (Bicentennial Man being one notable exception).
FWIW, the story about the Nestors (The Lost Robot, or something like that) specifically deals with strengthening the second law until it was equal with first, and the first really only meant that the robots wouldn't actively harm humans and they had no motivation to prevent harm. Plenty of room for havoc there, if say there was a manufacturing error that resulted in that.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Stop implying that he failed.
In Caves, a robot transported the weapon that served in a murder. In Nake sun, a robot with detachable limbs gave its arm to a woman with which she bludgered her husband. In Empire, a Solarian robot tries to kill a human being because her definition of such a being depends on his accent.
None of these are rampaging hordes of killbots like what we see in this movie's trailers. All of these were done in a smart, intelligent, toughtfull, non rampaging hordes of killbots kinda way.
You can't take the sky from me...
anyone intelligent enough to make a robot would build some failsafe in its programming,
There is a wonderful book (pure satire) set in such a world. It's called Tik-Tok by John Sladek. However, the central character is a robot that has something go very wrong with his "asimov circuits." The result is a tendancy to murder people and yet no-one in society believes he's capable of it (especially other robots), because they assume he's governed by the three laws.
The book is also one of the funniest and most absurd things I've ever read. If you like your humour black then it might be the perfect antidote to Hollywood's attempt to impart angular momentum to Isac Asimovs mortal remains.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
It was a typo. Actually the movie was originally going to be totally CG and done by Pixar. Steve Jobs liked the name iRobot. :-)
Asimov didn't design the three laws of robotics as gospel for real robots. He designed them so he could write stories about humans in which robots played an interesting part. He has said this himself quite a bit toward the end of his career.
Just the concept of "human" lead to a great Campbell essay in Analog asking "What do you mean: Human"? And that was in the mid-60s,
It's too bad the film had to chuck the essence of Asimov's imagined world for the simplistic drivel they created.
But action sells tickets to teens who otherwise won't bother with something where you might actually have to think and feel. For me "A. I." was a very fine film that works much better than almost any other S.F. film I've seen, and I've seen a lot even if it did need to have a machine longing to be human.
i'd love to see Benford's "Galactic Center" novels formed into a movie - just for the millieue.
Since you're commenting on the trailer, I'd imagine you haven't seen the movie yet. Yes, there are rampaging hordes of bots, but their objective isn't really killing (although it certainly happens, and I'm sure it had something to do with dollar signs - personally, I enjoyed it).
In fact, it's intimately tied in with the three laws, which the plot revolves around and show up prominantly before the title even crawls onto the screen.
Again, it may not be your cup of tea, but I think it was very true to the source material, and could have easily fit in as another story in I, Robot. And it was very entertaining.
It breaks down in two steps.
First, some people who value safety more and freedom less, compared with the general population, will choose to buy robots (or program settings for robots) that will protect them more, even at the expense of personal liberty.
Next, after several generations, people who do not do this will be viewed as exhibitting aberant behavior posing a danger to themselves and society. They will be considered negligent, insane, or criminal. Then they will have their liberties taken away, whether by robots or by other people.
Seat belts were once a voluntary safety measure. Now it is illegal in some places not to wear these restrictive appliances. Why did it become mandatory?
It will not happen like in the movie "I, Robot". It will be a gradual transition aided by complacency and natural selection, not a revolution. It could take a thousand years.
Mathematics is not a crime.