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Autonomous Robot Intentionally Hurts People To Make Them Bleed (fastcompany.com)
Asimove's first law of robotics has been broken, writes an anonymous reader, sharing this article from Fast Company:
A Berkeley, California man wants to start a robust conversation among ethicists, philosophers, lawyers, and others about where technology is going -- and what dangers robots will present humanity in the future. Alexander Reben, a roboticist and artist, has built a tabletop robot whose sole mechanical purpose is to hurt people... The harm caused by Reben's robot is nothing more than a pinprick, albeit one delivered at high speed, causing the maximum amount of pain a small needle can inflict on a fingertip.
Though the pinpricks are delivered randomly, "[O]nce something exists in the world, you have to confront it. It becomes more urgent," says the robot's creator. "You can't just pontificate about it.... " But the article raises an interesting question. Is he responsible for the pain which his robot inflicts?
Though the pinpricks are delivered randomly, "[O]nce something exists in the world, you have to confront it. It becomes more urgent," says the robot's creator. "You can't just pontificate about it.... " But the article raises an interesting question. Is he responsible for the pain which his robot inflicts?
Considering it's the intended purpose of the device, yes. This isn't a robot gone amok and there is no ethical quandry. Nothing to see here, move along.
Here's a boring answer. Yes. Why the fuck not?
-Dave
If you build a device and set it in motion to cause harm to another person, you're committing the crime of assault and battery. If it inflicts deadly harm, then you're a murderer.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Basically, this guy built a machine that doesn't serve a useful purpose. It inflicts a specific type of pain on people which the marketplace had no existing demand for. There are plenty of power tools and other machines out there which are capable of inflicting injury -- even if they're actually designed with a primary purpose of doing some sort of useful task (mowing lawns, shredding tree branches, etc. etc.).
He's not really starting a new conversation about anything I can see? Movies like Robocop addressed the possibility of building weaponized robots that could cause human injury, decades ago.
Unless we actually reach a point where robots can truly think for themselves and reason (not just the fake A.I. seen with intelligent agents like Siri on your phone), whoever builds them and programs them to work a certain way is ultimately responsible for what was constructed.
That's not a robot. That's a dumb mechanism. The Three Laws only apply to AI-based robots. Otherwise, the decisions are that of the programmer, a flawed human being.
No, it can hurt you... it just can't be held responsible, and that's what the earlier posts were going for. It also can't be a violation of Asimov's laws as the robot was never taught them or given a system with them baked in.
Seriously? No one at Slashdot caught Asimov's name being misspelled? Wow.
Ken
In this case, doing harm was the intent of the machine and/or it's programming. As such, the maker is clearly responsible. If the harm was unintended/unexpected and there were no clear negligence, then I'd have a completely different conversation on this.
Things get more difficult as you get further away from the original source, but -- generally speaking -- if the result is generally what you intended from an action (or series of actions), then it's pretty clear that you're responsible. This is even true where there is a human intermediary. If I pay a hitman to kill my ex wife, I can still be arrested for first degree murder -- even if he kills the wrong person by mistake.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
If you were actually trying to make a comparison against an Asimov robot, then this thing would have to be self aware, and intelligent. Once you have those major hurdles figured out, then you need to teach the robot that it can't hurt people. After this, you proceed to show the robot that it can get some kind of reward for hurting people. If it's able to decide to 'fix' it's programming to allow the humans to be hurt in order to better itself, then we're all fucked.
Until you can show all of the above to be true, this is a stupid clickbait story of minimal importance to anyone except maybe the bandaid company to fix all these poor fingers.
Oh, it can hurt you. Just like a motion detector hooked up to pull the pin on a grenade can hurt you. But the blame goes to the asshat who built it and armed it, not the pile of inanimate objects that does the damage.
It kept being brought back because the robot series is all about how badly any attempt to mechanize ethics fails. The Three Laws were, in a sense, the villain - or at least the antagonist - of the series.
If we ever get sapient robots, and conclude that it's okay to treat them as servants, I'd suggest using "do as you think I'd want you to do" or "treat everyone as you think they'd want to be treated" as the law.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The definition is unclear. Sci-fi often uses robot to mean an advanced, general purpose mechanical device with an AI controlling it. However in industrial uses it usually means a mechanical device for doing a given task, governed by a computer program. Commonly some of the machines used to build cars get called robots or robotic.
It is a word that doesn't seem to have a good solid definition.
Also, that aside, the three laws of robotics are something a sci-fi author wrote in stories, not real laws. They are not laws of nature, not codified laws, etc. They are just a plot device. This idea that they can will and must exist in the real world that so many geeks have is silly.
It also doesn't take a ton of ethical and/or logical analysis to figure out that they are the kind of thing that doesn't really work as any kind of absolute principle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
As I understand it, Asimov explicitely made his laws of robotics to cause conflicts that he could explore in his stories.
They were designed to fail.
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Who cares? There are already serious military applications of AI like Turrets and I'm sure much more advanced weapons. And that's from a slashdot article I once read a couple of years ago. So who knows what they have now. A little needle pricking robot is the least of our worries.
You've clearly never read Asimov. His writings about robots are morally sensitive and complex. If he thought of robots as an allegory for African Americans, then he thought they're superior to most humans, as that's his attitude about robots.
Maybe you should get that chip off your should and actually read what you're blindly complaining about.
When the adult already told you the damn stove was hot, it DOES tend to be your fault for touching the damn thing again and burning yourself. The parallel with this test is not that hard to discern here, so let's stop being ignorant about culpability. The main difference here is that it's expected for an adult to know better, hence the reason I label this a psychology test rather than a validation of anything else.
The robot in question could be a stove burner, knife, or baseball bat, as it contains as much intelligence as any of those examples.
Can't believe people want to bring "three-laws" concepts to the table when discussing a hammer.
Until a robot decides to help someone who wants to commit suicide. Then you are going to have to figure out exceptions... because there always are exceptions, except to the always exceptions rule.
Worst haiku evar!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
except to the always exceptions rule
No, there are exceptions to that as well. Take 1+1, for example. Now, that could be 1.6 + 1.7, which would be 3.3, making 1+1=3, an exception to the 1+1=2 rule caused by ignoring the decimal portion of a number. However, when you state the rule as "1.0 + 1.0 = 2", you find that there are, in fact, no exceptions. Even if you add 1.09 + 1.09, you end up with 2.18, which is still 2.
Yes, I'm taking a great many liberties. It's satire, I'm allowed to.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.