About That Robot…
A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
A robot may not harm a human being.
A robot must obey the orders given 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.
A robot must know it is a robot.
Isaac Asimov popularized the “Three Laws of Robotics” in his Robot series, starting in 1940. Asimov is a pillar of modern day science fiction. Not “just a writer”, he was a full on scientist, philosopher, and all around renaissance man. Asimov gave us the word “robotics”, and here we are!
What I find most interesting about his earliest explorations in this area is that he put a lot of time (50 years) into thinking about how these automaton would interact with humanity, and how humans would interact with them. Written into his “Three laws of robotics” were an obvious attempt to keep humans relevant and unharmed by the advancement of robotics. You might think he had a deference to humans and only viewed robots as slaves, but that is not the case. He ends up with a master universe scale robot that guides and protects “humanity’s” evolution over the span of millenia.
If you’re wondering what all the hubub is about, I strongly suggest you read the “Foundation Trilogy”, or even start with “iRobot”. Then you’ll say “Hay, wasn’t that the Will Smith movie?”, or “Hay, isn’t “Foundation” on Apple TV right now? Yup, this is where it comes from alright.
Right now, in 2024, we’re marking through AI and Robots at a very rapid clip. The ink has barely dried on our understanding of how to program computers, and we’ve launched full tilt into the creation of autonomous driving, Large Language Models, and humanoid robotics. Of course, “automation” writ large is nothing new. Humanity has been automating since we first picked up tools to smash insects open on rocks. Now is something new though. Now, particularly with LLMs, we’re getting closer to the automation of intellect, and not just labor. All the tools to date have helped up smash bugs better. Food production with automated farm equipment generates yields our grandparents could only dream of. We can produce goods in factories, turning out cars in hours, rather than days. We can even produce rocket engines by the hundreds a year at this point. All simple automation improvements.
But now, we’re automating intellect, meaning, you don’t need that human in the loop to generate the quarterly report. You don’t need the human in the loop to come up with the letter to send to employees wishing them happy holidays. In some cases, you don’t need humans in the loop to come up with the design of a new product, or an original score for a movie, or the entirety of a movie. With emerging tools, such as Sora, you can prompt your way to creating video scenes that are unique, and completely derived from the dream state of an AI.
I do ask myself this though; Where are the three+ laws of robotics?