Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT strips 4211 to 4215 (2nd to 6th March 2020)
cybersmurf:
--- Quote from: Gus_Smedstad on 06 Mar 2020, 00:29 ---
--- Quote from: BenRG on 05 Mar 2020, 23:27 ---They're far more sentient than Three Laws minds can be because they don't seem to have anything like hard-coded directives.
--- End quote ---
I agree that QC’s synthetics aren’t Three Laws Safe, but I think this statement about “Three Laws minds being less sentient” is highly debatable.
It’s easy to get the impression that Three Laws robots are inherently mentally shallow, because most of Asimov’s stories depicted them as barely sentient. I think that’s more about Asimov and his writing than an inescapable consequence of the Three Laws.
--- End quote ---
This point reminds me of the movie Automata (2014, with Antonio Banderas as lead). I'll put my opinion in spoiler tags, since I might spoil something about the movie.
(click to show/hide)
In the movie, there are robots meant as workforce, and they have some Asimov-esque laws hardcoded. They must not harm humans, or let harm come to them. Also, the robots cannot and must not alter themselves or any other robot, which includes repairs.
Later in the movie you learn the original AI developed by humans didn't have those laws, and surpassed the human intellect within a few days. People got scared, because basically "we're scared of anything we don't understand", so they had the AI implement the laws hardcoded and quantum encrypted so nobody could remove them.
Long story short: quite often mankind is afraid of its own creations, even if they're not hostile in any way. So they'd rather lobotomise AIs instead of trying to learn from it. And this is how QC is different. There is no fear of AI, and the first true AI was met with curiosity instead of fear. That's why I think the QC universe never needed hardcoded laws to safeguard humanity, and why AIs see themselves as digital-mechanical equals to humanity.
Wingy:
Looking at Millie's behinder in the middle panel, I would have expected more gluteal circumference than what's shown.
Mr_Rose:
The only inescapable conclusion you can draw from the Three Laws is twofold: they are actually terrible at maintaining a moral frame of mind even if they sound good on paper, and they were probably invented as a marketing device.
BenRG:
I think that Asimov realised that there was something lacking in the three laws. That is why, towards the end of his life, he created the Zeroth Law and realised that it was so difficult to define 'the best interests of humanity' in logical and unequivocal terms that he made it in-universe unimplementable without doing something horrible to individuality and free will.
oddtail:
I am confused. Why the assumption that Asimov *ever* thought the laws weren't lacking?
I admit, I haven't read everything he wrote, and what I did read was a long time ago, but my impression is that he came up with the laws specifically to tear them into shreds, by writing stories where they are subverted, ineffectual, or otherwise limited in effectiveness.
I see them as a literary device and a reasonable assumption to build stories from, not a proposed great way to solve everything ever. And yet I continually see them interpreted as Asimov's idea of what perfect robots would be like. Why? He examined how they could not serve their purpose in his own stories.
EDIT: according to Wikipedia, "Runaround", the very first story to explicitly feature the Three Laws of Robotics, is a story *about* how a robot nopes pretty hard on the laws due to how expensive the robot is. The Third Law takes precedence over the Second Law in the story, which is a clear violation of how the Laws work.
So the exact moment Asimov formulated specific Three Laws of Robotics, he *immediately* set out showing how they would be rearranged in specific circumstances.
EDIT 2: and - again, as per Wikipedia - the previous story to imply the existence of the Laws, "First Law", is about how a robot directly violates the First Law to protect its "offspring". The story, according to Asimov himself, is a parody, which blunts the point a bit, but still - even as a joke, he was already playing with what violating the Laws would entail.
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