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New Robots and the Ten Ethical Laws Of Robotics
Roland Piquepaille writes "The robotics actuality is pretty rich these days. Besides the fighting robots of Robo-One and the flying microrobots from Epson (the best picture is at Ananova), here are some the latest intriguing news in robotics. In Japan, Yoshiyuki Sankai has built a robot suit, called Hybrid Assistive Limb-3 (or HAL-3), designed to help disabled or elderly people. In the U.S., Ohio State University is developing a robotic tomato harvester for the J.F. Kennedy Space Center while Northrop Grumman received $1 billion from the Pentagon to build a new robotic fighter. I kept the best for the end. A Californian counselor has just patented the ten ethical laws of robotics. A good read for a Sunday, if you can understand what he means. This summary only focuses on HAL-3 and one of the most incredible patents I've ever seen, so please read the above articles for more information about the other subjects."
This cursory system of safeguards...remains simplistic in its dictates, leaving open the specific details for implementing such a system
Well, obviously the specific details have to be left open, or a robot wouldn't be able to operate efficiently because of the strict rigor of their rules. In fact, even with 3 (or 4, depending on whether you count the Zeroth law), Asimov's Olivaw character (and others at other points) are severely limited by even the 3 'open' laws.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
As much as I hate cigarette smoke, I'm not sure I want robots running around yanking cigarettes from people's mouths. After all, letting someone smoke would clearly be a violation of the "harm through inaction " law of robotics. Society already mandates the removal of too much personal risk and self-responsibility. The last thing we need is robots deciding what their human "masters" can and cannot do.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
There's an idea - the patent has to be written in such a way so that the _patent examiner(s)_ can recreate the invention. That takes care of obfuscated patents & stupid patent examiners in one definition!
The story of John E. LaMuth and his patent on the 10 laws was carried on Robots.net in August of 2003. Slashdot's running a bit behind on this one! http://robots.net/article/931.html
"Since when has killing people been more of a priotiry than say.... eating?"
well you see tomatos don't run away when there being harvested while people tend to flee or defend themselves...i think that would be one good reason for the budget differances.....by the way guns were used to free the slaves. Oh yeah and since the invention of the atomic bomb world population has more then doubled and life expectancy has risen world wide....oh yeah and more democracy now prevails over more countries then eveer before...did i mention that literacy is at an all time historical high.
On all measures humanity gains more freedom, and more prosarity as our weapons become more syphisticated also since the end of ww2 war causualties as a persentage of population have dropped. so one of two things are true....better weapons means better peace, prosparity and freedom...or better weapons have no measurable effect on human peace, prosperity, and freedom and coinciddntly follow these increasing trends....the third option that you infer has no evidence to supprot it...that better weapons hurt humanity progres.
just food for thought
stendec@gmail.com
The Joint Unmanned Combat Aerial System (J-UCAS) has nothing to do with air-to-air and cruise missile targeting. It also is not aimed at air-to-air combat of any form. It is designed to do suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) and in the Navy's case, certain low level strike missions as well. Both the Air Force-derived X-45 series (built by Boeing) and the Navy's X-47 series (Northrop Grumman) have flown as part of this program. Check out the DARPA site for more details.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
I mean, really. Check out some of his laws:
etc. It goes on and on in the same fashioned. I think that any robot programmed according to these principles will be as psychotic as he is. Scary. And You are invited to see how valid his reality construct is in the first place, just from the examples given above. I believed it tragically flawed.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
And a related side question is, how the fuck does the USPTO grant so many obvious/devious/retarded/nonsensical patents? I know they don't have Einsteins on the payroll to review them, but come on!...
Well, according to this document:
So it would seem that we have a semi-privatized organization whose primary annual income is realized by awarding patents. Still surprised that so many of these gems just "slip through" and nothing is done about it?
There comes a time in every friendship when you have to say, "I never liked you, get lost." --Bill McNeil
That said, if they let through stupid patents they're likely to continue getting stupid patents which increases their overall volume and therefor their income so the end result is essentially the same.