Slashdot Mirror
Mars Lander's Robot Arm Shuts Down To Save Itself
Cowards Anonymous passes along a PCWorld article that begins, "The robotic arm on the Mars Lander found itself in a tough position over the weekend. After receiving instructions for a movement that would have damaged its wrist, the robotic arm recognized the problem, tried to rectify it and then shut down before it could damage itself, according to Ray Arvidson, a co-investigator for the Mars Lander's robotic arm team and a professor at Washington University in St. Louis."
The conflict between second and third laws in a robot with different weightings to the usual (the third law being more strongly emphasized to prevent loss of the robot) was covered by Asimov in Runaround:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaround
The Mars lander would be in a similar situation; it's very expensive to create and get there, and self preservation is therefore more important than for robots back here on earth.
no mail has bar codes
*Cough* POSTNET *cough*
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Actually, the operations of the laws assume a highly sophisticated robotic intelligence. Even the most primitive robots in the Asimovian universe have considerable, and impressive capabilities when it comes to projecting the probable results of their actions and comparing it to the intent of the orders they have been given. Furthermore, they seem to have an ability to determine if current orders conflict with prior orders, even implicit orders, and weigh the right of the issuer to give that order.
So, if you are a guest in somebody's house, and order the robot to fetch you a glass of water, it will do so. It may have to do so without being asked if it determines you need water. On the other hand, it will not obey the order to destroy your host's house, either because of first law harm to the owner, or because of an implicit prior order to see that the house comes to no harm, or because of an implicit order to respect property laws and rights. Naturally all of these considerations would apply to itself, since it too is property.
An Asimovian robot, if ordered to take an action which will result in its destruction, may or may not follow that order for any number of reasons. There are the considerations I've just listed, of course, but most robots would probably require a clear and unambiguous indication that their destruction is an acceptable consequence of an order, even if the issuer is entitled to destroy them. This does not violate the law ordering, because it amounts to prioritizing the intent of the order over its literal execution.
Finally, any robots might well ignore a clear order to destroy themselves from a person with a legal right to issue that order, because following that order will harm a human being. The most sophisticated ones might well refuse such an order if it would harm society, exhibiting something that is tantamount to ethical reasoning.
If robots simply followed any instruction that didn't involve directly harming a human being, then much of the enjoyable complications of the stories would be gone. The stories are a kind of philosophical exploration of the very concept of ethics by positing a very minimalist system of ethics, and a group of beings bound absolutely to obey that system to the best of their ability.
Many stories hinge on ethical dilemmas; but Asimov's robot stories are the only ones I know to do so with a simplified model of ethical systems.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
thats assuming every postal system is identical to the one in your country... :-)
As the decision tree gets huge, just about any tiny action will eventually lead to tragedy, or [odius] being elected.
Yes, this was the conclusion that was eventually arrived at by the robots, if you bothered to read the novels. At which point they simply left, after concluding that any interaction with humanity would ultimately be more damaging than anything they could do by sticking around.
As was part of the plotline of "Little Lost Robot". Part of Susan Calvin's method to find the robot was to try and trigger the "through inaction" part of the First Law, but the lost robot convinced the other robots that if following the First Law causes self-destruction before the harm is prevented, then the First Law is moot and won't trigger, which then only left the Second Law to trigger.