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> or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. This has always felt like a gaping hole to me. It seems like to work it would have to a) always ma

> or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. This has always felt like a gaping hole to me. It seems like to work it would have to a) always make perfect predictions of the future, and b) agree with relevant humans what "harm" is.

burkaman 4y ago
That's sort of the point of his stories. The laws do not work, and there is no set of laws that could work perfectly. Any set of rules as simple as this applied to something as complex as humanity will always have a mountain of loopholes.
- gnramires 4y ago
  I confess I haven't read all of his work on robots, but actually (perhaps contrary to popular belief) Asimov was hopeful on robots from the start. His very first short story[1] and one of the first stories about robots (after RUR, which is amusingly and maybe unsurprisingly both the story to coin the term Robot and already feature a robot uprising!): it's essentially a touching friendship story between Gloria and her robot Robbie. I wouldn't say there's no AI risk, or risk from having robots and powerful intelligences, but he generally seemed to convey that we should be capable of making quite safe and quite friendly robots, given that we can make them at all. Which makes sense to me. The engineering of ethics in robots and AI doesn't seem too much more alien than the task of engineering AI itself (specially goal-oriented AI). It requires effort, attention to detail, and a progress in understanding morality and ethics that is going to be difficult for us, but it shouldn't be that fundamentally scary, as long as we collectively have the will to make them safe (in the spirit of the three laws). I think Hollywood (in 'I, Robot' the movie) exaggerated his impression of AI danger (perhaps because of the 'Frankenstein complex'[2] Asimov coined), and the interest in catastrophe. I think 'The bicentennial man' is a complementary movie more in the hopeful spirit of Asimov. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_(short_story) Quote: " The story centers on the technophobia that surrounds robots, and how it is misplaced. Almost all previously published science fiction stories featuring robots followed the theme 'robot turns against creator'; Asimov has consistently held the belief that the Frankenstein complex was a misplaced fear, and the majority of his works attempted to provide examples of the help that robots could provide humanity. " [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein_complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein_complex
thedorkknight 4y ago
If I recall correctly, the whole point was that aligned goals are super hard to do, and that this is what leads to the robots creating a secret robot illuminati that takes over world leadership without anyone realizing they're voting for robots, and then working to protect humans.
- RangerScience 4y ago
  Yup! Ironically, of all the things the movie did... poorly, the robot's realization of the "Zeroeth Law" (first law, but applied to "Humanity" at large) was (IMHO) canon.
ChrisClark 4y ago
Yeah, his stories were about those gaping holes and how things go horribly wrong because of them.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
Asimov was thinking about alignment before it was cool.

burkaman 4y ago

That's sort of the point of his stories. The laws do not work, and there is no set of laws that could work perfectly. Any set of rules as simple as this applied to something as complex as humanity will always have a mountain of loopholes.

gnramires 4y ago
I confess I haven't read all of his work on robots, but actually (perhaps contrary to popular belief) Asimov was hopeful on robots from the start. His very first short story[1] and one of the first stories about robots (after RUR, which is amusingly and maybe unsurprisingly both the story to coin the term Robot and already feature a robot uprising!): it's essentially a touching friendship story between Gloria and her robot Robbie. I wouldn't say there's no AI risk, or risk from having robots and powerful intelligences, but he generally seemed to convey that we should be capable of making quite safe and quite friendly robots, given that we can make them at all. Which makes sense to me. The engineering of ethics in robots and AI doesn't seem too much more alien than the task of engineering AI itself (specially goal-oriented AI). It requires effort, attention to detail, and a progress in understanding morality and ethics that is going to be difficult for us, but it shouldn't be that fundamentally scary, as long as we collectively have the will to make them safe (in the spirit of the three laws). I think Hollywood (in 'I, Robot' the movie) exaggerated his impression of AI danger (perhaps because of the 'Frankenstein complex'[2] Asimov coined), and the interest in catastrophe. I think 'The bicentennial man' is a complementary movie more in the hopeful spirit of Asimov. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_(short_story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_(short_story) Quote: " The story centers on the technophobia that surrounds robots, and how it is misplaced. Almost all previously published science fiction stories featuring robots followed the theme 'robot turns against creator'; Asimov has consistently held the belief that the Frankenstein complex was a misplaced fear, and the majority of his works attempted to provide examples of the help that robots could provide humanity. " [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein_complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein_complex

thedorkknight 4y ago

If I recall correctly, the whole point was that aligned goals are super hard to do, and that this is what leads to the robots creating a secret robot illuminati that takes over world leadership without anyone realizing they're voting for robots, and then working to protect humans.

RangerScience 4y ago
Yup! Ironically, of all the things the movie did... poorly, the robot's realization of the "Zeroeth Law" (first law, but applied to "Humanity" at large) was (IMHO) canon.

ChrisClark 4y ago

Yeah, his stories were about those gaping holes and how things go horribly wrong because of them.

HDThoreaun 4y ago

Asimov was thinking about alignment before it was cool.