How Asimov's Three Laws Ran Out of Steam

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like AI-powered weapons systems could soon be outlawed before they're even built. While discussing whether robots should be allowed to kill might like an obscure debate, robots (and artificial intelligence) are playing ever-larger roles in society and we are figuring out piecemeal what is acceptable and what isn't. If killer robots are immoral, then what about the other uses we've got planned for androids? Asimov's three laws don't seem to cut it, as this story explains: 'As we consider the ethical implications of having robots in our society, it becomes obvious that robots themselves are not where responsibility lies.'"

Comments

Missed the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Asimov's stories were all about how the three laws were not sufficient for the real world. The article recognises this, even if the summary doesn't.

Re:Missed the point

[girlintraining]

Asimov's stories were all about how the three laws were not sufficient for the real world. The article recognises this, even if the summary doesn't.

Dice Unlimited Profits And Robotics, Inc., would like to remind you that it's new, hip brand of robotic authors have just enough AI to detect when something is sufficiently nerdy to post, but unfortunately lack the underlying wisdom of knowing why something is nerdy. Unfortunately, I expect our future killer robots in the sky will have similar pattern recognition problems... and wind up exterminating everyone because they are deemed insufficiently [insert ethnicity, nationality, race, etc., here] in pursuit of blind perfectionism.

Common sense has never been something attributed either to slashdot authors, or robotic evil overlords.

Re:Missed the point

[dywolf]

It wasnt so much that the laws didnt cut it, thats too simplistic and even in his own words not what it was about.
it was that the robots could interpret the laws in ways we couldnt or didnt anticipate, because in fact in nearly all the stories involving them the robots never failed to obey them.

Asimov saw robots, seen at the time as monsters, as an engineering problem to be solved. he quite correctly saw that we would program them with limits, int he process creating the concept of computer science. he then went about writing stories around robots that never failed to obey their programming, but as effectively sentient thinking beings, would interpret their programming in ways the society around them couldn't anticipate because they saw the robots as mere tools, not thinking machines. and thus he created his lens (like all good scifi writers) for writing about society and technology.

Asimov's three laws do not run out of steam

[Taco Cowboy]

The three laws as laid down by Asimov are still as valid as ever.

It's the people who willingly violate those laws.

Just like the Constitution of the United States - they are as valid as ever. It's the current form of the government of the United States which willingly violate the Constitution.

Re:Asimov's three laws do not run out of steam

[dywolf]

Stop saying that. That isnt it at all and you failed to grasp his points, even as he himself spelled out his thinking in his essays on the topic.

Asimov never thought the rules he created were "not at all valid". On the contrary.

Asimov saw robots, seen at the time as monsters, as an engineering problem to be solved. he quite correctly saw that we would program them with limits (in the process creating the concept of computer science).

he then went about writing stories around robots that never failed to obey their programming, but as effectively sentient thinking beings, would interpret their programming in ways the society around them couldn't anticipate because they saw the robots as mere tools, not thinking machines. and thus he created his lens (like all good scifi writers) for writing about society and technology.

he NEVER said the laws were not valid or were insufficient.
that was NEVER the point.

These robots are not different from guns

[kruach aum]

Robots that are not responsible for their own actions are ethically not different from guns. They are both machines designed to kill others that need a human being to operate them, with whom the responsibility for their operation lies.

I first wanted to write something about how morally autonomous robots would make the question more interesting, but the relation between a human creating an autonomous robot is no different from a parent giving birth to a child. Parents are not responsible for the crimes their children commit, and neither should the creators of such robots be. Up to a certain age children can't be held responsible in the eyes of the law, and up to a certain level of development neither should robots be.

ethics of killing and warfare

[The Real Dr John]

It is kind of sad that people spend so much time thinking about the moral and ethical ways to wage war and kill other people, whether robots are involved or not. Maybe a step back to think about the impossibility of moral or ethical war and killing is where we should be focusing. Then the question of whether robots can be trusted to kill morally doesn't come up.

Re:ethics of killing and warfare

[The Real Dr John]

How many wars that the US has started since WWII were necessary with the possible exception of the first Gulf War? As General Smedley Butler famously claimed, war is a racket. The US often goes to war now in order to project geopolitical power, not to defend the US. Plus there is a great profit incentive for defense contractors. Sending young people, often from families of meager means, to kill other people of meager means overseas can not be done morally. The vast number of soldiers returning with PTSD prove that war is damaging to both the side that loses, and the side that wins.

Re:ethics of killing and warfare

[dak664]

Moral killing may not be that hard to define. Convert the three laws of robotics into three laws of human morals by taking them in reverse order:

1) Self-preservation
2) Obey orders if no conflict with 1
3) Don't harm others if no conflict with 1 or 2

To be useful in war an AI would have to have to follow those laws, except that self-preservation would apply to whichever human overlords constructed them.

Re:Actually, it's four laws, not three

[just_a_monkey]

There is a 0:th law...

Ah, yes. Good old "A robot shall take no action, nor allow other robots to take action, that may result in the parent company being sued."

Re:"robots are immoral"

[dkleinsc]

The correct term is "amoral": Robots have no moral sense whatsoever. "immoral" would imply they had moral sense but were actively engaging in the behavior that is against that morality.

This is why transhumanism is not a joke.

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Robots aren't the problem. Robots are the latest extension of humanity's will via technology. The fact that in some cases they're somewhat anthropomorphic (or animalpomorphic) is irrelevant. We don't have now nor will we have a human vs robot problem; we have a human nature problem.

Excepting disease and natural catastrophes and of course human ignorance- which taken together are historically the worst inflictors of mass human suffering- the problems we've had throughout history can be laid at the feet of human nature and our own behavior to one another.

We are creatures, like all other creatures, which evolved brains to perform some very basic social and survival functions. Sure, it's not ALL we are, but this list basically accounts for most of the "bad parts" of human history and when I say history I mean to include future history.

At the most basic brains function to ensure the individual does well at the expense of other individuals, then secondly that the individual's family does well at the expense of other families and thirdly that the individual's group does well at the expense of other groups and finally that the individual does well relative to members of his own group.

The consequences for not winning in any of the above circumstance are pain suffering and, in a worst case scenario, genetic lineage death- you have no copulatory opportunities and / or your offspring are all killed. (cure basement-dwelling jokes)

All of us who have been left standing at the end of this evolutionary process, we all are putative winners in a million year old repeated game. There are few, or more likely zero, representatives of the tribe who didn't want to play, because to not play is to lose and to lose is to be extinguished for all time.

What this means is, we are just not very nice to each other and that niceness falls away with exponential rapidity as we travel away from any conceptual "us" ; Supporting and caring about each other is just not the first priority in our lives and more bluntly any trace of the egalitarian impulse is totally absent from a large part of the population. OTOH we're , en masse, genocidal at the drop of a hat. This is just the tale both history and our own personal experience tells.

Sure, some billionaires give their money away after there's no where else for them to go in terms of the "I'm important, and better than you, genuflect (or at least do a double take) when I light up a room" type esteem they crave from other members of the tribe. Many more people under that level of wealth and comfort just continue to try to amass more and more for themselves and then take huge pains to passed it on to their kin.

The problem is, we are no longer suited, we are no longer a fit, to the environment we find ourselves in, the environment we are creating.

We have two choices. We can try to limit, stop, contain, corral, monitor and otherwise control our fellow human beings so they can't pick up the fruits of this technology and kill a lot or even the rest of us one fine day. The problem here is as technology advances, the control we need to exert will become near absolute. In fact, we are seeing this dynamic at play already with the NSA spying scandal. It's not an aberration and it's not going to go away, it's only going to get worse.

The other choice is to face up to what we are as a species (I'm sure all my fellow /. ers are noble exceptions to these evolutionary pressures) and change what we are using our technology, at least somewhat, so that, say, flying plane loads of people into skyscrapers doesn't seem like the thing to do to anyone and nor does it seem like a good idea to treat each other as ruinously as we can get away with in order to advantage ourselves.

This would be using technology to better that part of the world we call ourselves and recreating ourselves in our own better image. In fact, some argue, that's the real utility of maintaining that better image - which we rarely live up-

Re:This is why transhumanism is not a joke.

[VortexCortex]

We don't have now nor will we have a human vs robot problem; we have a human nature problem.

While I agree to an extent, I think this a too simplistic a statement. You are not special. Any sufficiently complex interaction is indistinguishable from sentience because that's all sentience is. You have an ethics problem, one that does involve your cybernetic creations. It's not necessarily a human nature problem, I suspect genes have far less to do with your alleged problems than perception.

I study cybernetics, in both organic and artificial neural networks. There is no real difference between organic and machine intelligence. I can model certain worm's 11 neuron brain all too easily. It takes more virtual neurons since organic neurons are multi-function (influenced by multiple electrochemical properties), but the organic neurons can be approximated quite well, and the resulting artificial behaviors can be indistinguishable from the organic creature. Scaling up isn't a problem. More complex n.nets yield more complex emergent behaviors.

At the most basic brains function to ensure the individual does well at the expense of other individuals, then secondly that the individual's family does well at the expense of other families and thirdly that the individual's group does well at the expense of other groups and finally that the individual does well relative to members of his own group.

No. The brain is not to blame for this behavior; It exists at a far higher complexity level than the concept. Brains may be the method of expressing this behavior in humans, but they are not required for this to occur. At the most basic, brains are storehouses of information, which pattern match against the environment to produce decision logic in response to stimuli rather than carrying out a singular codified action sequence. The more complex brain will have more complex instincts, and are aware of how to handle more complex situations. Highly complex brains can adapt to new stimuli and solve problems not coded for at the genetic level. The most complex brains on this planet are aware of their own existence. Awareness is the function of brains, preservation drives function at a much lower level of complexity, and needn't necessarily involve brains; As evidenced in many organic and artificial neural networks having brain function, but no self preservation.

The consequences for not winning in any of the above circumstance are pain suffering and, in a worst case scenario, genetic lineage death- you have no copulatory opportunities and / or your offspring are all killed. (cure basement-dwelling jokes)

The thing to note is that selection and competition are inherent, and pain is a state that requires a degree of overall system-state knowledge (a degree of self awareness), e.g.: Neither RNA or DNA feel pain. In my simplified atomic evolution sims whereby atoms of various charge can link or break links and be attracted / repelled by others, nothing more: The first "assembling" interactions will produce tons of long molecular chains, but be destroyed or interrupted long before complete domination; entropy takes it's toll (you must have entropy, or no mutation, just a single dominant structure will form). From these bits of chains more complex interactions will occur. The first self reproducing interaction will dominate the entire sim for ages, until enough non-harmful extra cruft has piggy backed into the reproduction such that other more complex traits emerge, such as inert sections as shields to vital components. As soon as there is any differentiation that survives replication the molecular competition begins: The replicator destroying itself after n+1 reproductions such that offspring molecules can feed on its atoms; An unstable tail of highly charged atoms appended just before end of replication that tangles up other replicators which then brea

Point is irrelevant

[fyngyrz]

Yes, the laws were flawed, and yes, that's the idea Asimov mined to produce some interesting stories.

But the thing here is that those laws require both a free-thinking intelligence that can reason non-linearly, and a locked-down computer-like slavish obedience to simplistic concepts. As we have yet to put any kind of actual AI in the field, we not only don't have such magic combo, we don't even know how to make such a magic combo.

The only high-level intelligence we know of is us; and getting one of us to rigidly obey the three laws would be an exercise in utter frustration. No reason to think it'd be any more practical in Robbie the Robot, esq., citizen of the Consolidated Intelligences Union.