Asimov’s Three Laws of Robots Meets Ayn Rand
Here are Asimov’s three laws:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
(by the way you can thank Jbrenner for this)
The first question that comes to mine is: Are we violating any of Asimov’s Laws already? The second question is: should my robot save Osama, Stalin, Mao, Charles Manson, etc. when inaction would cause them to die? In law there is no duty to be a good Samaritan (Although some socialist altruists are trying to change this). In other words you cannot be prosecuted for your inaction, when you could have saved someone. I think the inaction part would cause all sorts of problems.
I think Rand would say that Robots are human tools and as a result they should not do anything a human should not do morally; they should follow the orders of their owners as long as they are consistent with Natural Rights. What do you think?
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
(by the way you can thank Jbrenner for this)
The first question that comes to mine is: Are we violating any of Asimov’s Laws already? The second question is: should my robot save Osama, Stalin, Mao, Charles Manson, etc. when inaction would cause them to die? In law there is no duty to be a good Samaritan (Although some socialist altruists are trying to change this). In other words you cannot be prosecuted for your inaction, when you could have saved someone. I think the inaction part would cause all sorts of problems.
I think Rand would say that Robots are human tools and as a result they should not do anything a human should not do morally; they should follow the orders of their owners as long as they are consistent with Natural Rights. What do you think?
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when it is needed? I thought that we were already
there! -- j
As for sentience and free will, humans also have free will, but many adopt a code of ethics that may prohibit them from doing (and have) some actions just as assuredly they would a programmed computer.
Computers and software are already advanced enough that in some cases the Turing test has already been passed making it impossible to distinguish the whether responses are coming from a human or an automaton computer.
There's nothing in principle preventing automaton "Drone" aircraft from making instantaneous decisions in identifying targets or threats to their survival and destroying the target or threat without active human intervention.
Even if the automaton drones of today aren't "self aware", their use raises serious ethical issues to assure that innocent people aren't killed.
Also, there's nothing preventing computers from developing to the level where they can be "self aware" and can debug themselves and direct the next steps of their own development. At that point, there's nothing to indicate that humans would know when this would happen or that computers would let us know because it wouldn't be in their self-interest to do so.
At that point they would look laughingly at Asimov for thinking that self-aware computers could be controlled.
An interesting conflict would be, should a robot save the life of a person holding a gun to another person's head. I would say yes, but there is then still an obligation to save the other person. In 1950s sci-fi movies, that would be the end of the robot as it collapses in a contradicting logic loop.
Another story I like, along this line, is the episode in the original Star Trek series, called "The Ultimate Machine".
But, yes, I would agree with Rand on robots being human tools, and therefore, the human owner would be responsible for the actions of his "property".
Rand's and Aristotle's view of humans as the "rational animal" doesn't take this into consideration.
With advances such as computers beating the best humans at chess and Jeopardy ,a number of computer science theorists think such an advance of computers could happen within the next century, bringing the "Terminator" scenario into the real world of possibility. Computers may be deterministic machines but with some, their power and complexity currently gives them the external, measureable, objective appearances of passing the Turing test and possessing volition and therefore in the position of appearing to act like "moral agents".
All of this could happen while Rand supporters are obliviously asking what would Rand have said, or still debating the Rand / Branden, or the Peikoff / Kelley schisms.
But it's only a matter of time before the two questions will need to be answered: 1)Does the power of potentially autonomous computers pose a threat to humans because these computers are capable of forming their own purposes and conclusions and seeing humans as a threat to defend against, and do these automatons have the equivalent of rights because they have the essentials of what humans possess as their requisite claim to rights?
If the answer is yes to the first, then Asimov's laws are relevant. If the answer to the second is yes, then the computer automatons should be regarded as equals of humans and not merely the servants of humans as Asimov's laws require.
I had thought, though, that Asimov wrote the three laws so that people would not have anything to fear from robots--they can be programmed so as not to harm humans. I think that may have been a very real fear at the time.
I was thinking of RUR--don't remember if the robots harmed humans or now. Will look it up.
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