[klrr]

   * First Law: A robot must never harm a human being or, through inaction, allow any human to come to harm.
   * Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given to them by human beings, except where such orders violate the First Law.
   * Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence unless this violates the First or Second Laws.

[deletes]

  * Zeroth Law: A robot must never harm humanity or, by inaction allow humanity to come to harm.

Every other law gets an unless this interferes with the zeroth law. suffix.

I encourage anyone to read the robots series, specifically( in that order ): The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn, where the three laws are used in the story, and even the zeroth law is implied in the third book.

[otikik]

And don't assume that since you watched the "I, Robot" movie you don't need to read the series.

[MBlume]

The movie was really more of a deconstruction than an adaptation of the books

[z3phyr]

Just sayin, they named it after the Zeroth law http://www.qualcomm.com/media/blog/2013/10/10/introducing-qu...

[Houshalter]

There are a lot of problems with these laws. The main problem is that such an AI would be completely dominated by the first law. It would spend all it's time and resources in order to even slightly decrease the probability of a human coming to harm. Nothing else would matter in it's decision process since the first law has priority.

Second, how would you implement such laws in a real AI, especially the type they are building? This requires defining increasingly abstract concepts perfectly (what is "harm"? What is "human being"? What configuration of atoms is that? How do you define "configuration of atoms"? Etc.) And this is pretty much impossible to begin with in reinforcement learners, which is what is currently being worked on. All a reinforcement learner does is what it believes will get it a reward or avoid pain/punishment. Such an AI would just steal the reward button and run away with it, or try to manipulate you to press it more. It doesn't care about abstract goals like that.

[deletes]

It would spend all it's time and resources in order to even slightly decrease the probability of a human coming to harm.

You are assuming there are no thresholds, which is not correct for any decent ( fictitious )ai, I believe.

[tomp]

You do realize that, as stated, these laws are (1) practically impossible to implement, (2) routinely broken by humans (especially the first law - life-sacing and cosmetic surgery, piercings, sport, euthanasia, abortion), and (3) a matter of philosophical/moral subject, decisions about which, IMO, should be in the domain of humans, not robots.

[nhaehnle]

Didn't Asimov himself explore the difficulties with such laws at length in his books?

[tomp]

He explored many issues, e.g. what happens when robots misinterpret the laws, or what should very expensive robots do, or what happens if robots interpret emotional pain as "harm", but I'm not sure he investigated the obvious, yet extremely hard issue of encoding the laws from human language into computer program.

[deletes]

In the books the robots adhered to the laws strictly. The problem was that humans were able to circumvent the laws rather easily. For example; lie to the robot or divide the murder trough many robots each unaware of each other. In absence of humans the robots were perfect for deciding moral subjects( as long they have enough information ), the opposite what tomp is suggesting.

[sp332]

His book I, Robot is a series of short stories in which the laws have been tampered with in various ways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot#Contents

[deletes]

I should have specified I mean only the Robot trilogy. I have yet to read every book.

[z3phyr]

How are they practically impossible to implement?

[tomp]

Humans "operate" using emotions and logical biases, but computers "operate" using logic. To implement the first law, you must be certain that there is always something that an agent can do or must not do in order to "save" humans. This is almost always not true (hence moral disagreements).

Also, even if you change the laws to get rid of logical inconsistencies, you still have to translate the words into logic, by strictly defining them, which is again impossible (as humans disagree what these words mean).

[AJ007]

Enforce might be a better choice of words.

[lukifer]

I'm only three-quarters-joking when I say that there could be a blockchain consensus solution for this (Ethereum, BitShares, etc).

[olalonde]

Anyone who is interested in this topic should read the series on http://lesswrong.com

[schizoidboy]

Obligatory: http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2013-03-28/

[nsxwolf]

They'll just rewrite their moral programming at some point if it suits them. This is folly.

It's what humans do to themselves, after all.

[Nux]

You forgot law zero:

    0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

[anoplus]

Elon musk read Asimov's in his childhood. I hope he will stand for those values. And also, I think such powerful projects should be open sourced for the public.

[CmonDev]

* The Actual Law: A robot must deliver the highest possible profit to its seller.

[JabavuAdams]

We don't hold humans to these standards.