Humans’ developed code of conduct lives primarily in the nonverbal parts of our brain. Rule violations have emotional content. A kid does not just learn a ratio

Humans’ developed code of conduct lives primarily in the nonverbal parts of our brain. Rule violations have emotional content. A kid does not just learn a rational response to a fire or hot stove, they fear it because of pain and injury. We don’t just reason about hurting others, we feel bad about it. LLMs don’t have that part of the brain. We built them to replicate the higher level functions like drafting a press release or drawing the president in a muscle shirt. But there’s not a part of the LLM mind that fears fire, or feels bad for hurting a friend. Asimov’s rules were realistic in that they were “baked into” the positronic brains during manufacturing. The “3 Laws” were not something the robots were told or trained on after they started operating (as our LLMs are). The laws were intrinsic. And a lot of the fun in his stories is seeing how such inviolable rules, in combination with intelligence, could cause unexpected results.