Two US engineers have re-written Asimov's three laws of robotics to govern practical automatons.
"When you think about it, our cultural view of robots has always been anti-people, pro-robot," said Professor David Woods of Ohio State University. "The philosophy has been: 'Sure, people make mistakes, but robots will be better, a perfect version of ourselves.' We wanted to write three new laws to get people thinking about the human-robot relationship in more realistic, grounded ways."
Science fiction writer Asimov's laws are programmed into the brains of his creations in a way that cannot be disobeyed.
They are:
- A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
"He uses the three laws as a literary device. The plot is driven by the gaps in the laws - the situations in which the laws break down," said Wood. "For those laws to be meaningful, robots have to possess a degree of social intelligence and moral intelligence, and Asimov examines what would happen when that intelligence isn't there."
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"His stories are so compelling because they focus on the gap between our aspirations about robots and our actual capabilities. And that's the irony, isn't it? When we envision our future with robots, we focus on our hopes and desires and aspirations about robots, not reality."
Woods and Dr Robin Murphy of Texas A&M University, composed three laws that put the responsibility back on humans.
While lacking the elegance of Asimov's laws, they look like they will keep lawyers happily engaged.
"Our laws are little more realistic, and therefore a little more boring," said Woods.
They are:
- A human may not deploy a robot without the human-robot work system meeting the highest legal and professional standards of safety and ethics.
- A robot must respond to humans as appropriate for their roles.
- A robot must be endowed with sufficient situated autonomy to protect its own existence as long as such protection provides smooth transfer of control which does not conflict with the First and Second Laws.
According to Woods:
The new first law assumes the reality that humans deploy robots. The second assumes that robots will have limited ability to understand human orders, and so they will be designed to respond to an appropriate set of orders from a limited number of humans.
The last law is the most complex, said Woods: "Robots exist in an open world where you can't predict everything that's going to happen. The robot has to have some autonomy in order to act and react in a real situation. It needs to make decisions to protect itself, but it also needs to transfer control to humans when appropriate. You don't want a robot to drive off a ledge, for instance, unless a human needs the robot to drive off the ledge. When those situations happen, you need to have smooth transfer of control from the robot to the appropriate human. The bottom line is, robots need to be responsive and resilient. They have to be able to protect themselves and also smoothly transfer control to humans when necessary."