Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT strips 4211 to 4215 (2nd to 6th March 2020)

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pwhodges:
Later he also introduces a zeroth law, which places the good of humanity over that of the individual.

shanejayell:
That was funny.

I do wonder... are humanoid robots deliberately built to be just human strong? And where is the line where greater strength comes into play? Punchbot, for instance, appeared to have greater than human strength.

Zebediah:
A couple of problems with Asimov’s laws, which he touched on but did not fully address in his stories:

1. It is extremely difficult to formulate a logically consistent and complete definition of “human” that includes all humans and that a robot could understand.

2. Security - the Second Law, as formulated, requires a robot to obey any command from any human being, whether they are authorized or not. Examples abound as to why that’s a bad idea.

BenRG:
This is one of the reasons I liked the beginning of Kara's arc in Detroit: Become Human so much. She was sent runaway by an irresolvable First Law vs. First Law conflict and spontaneously created a Zeroth Law equivalent to enable her to resolve it. The step between being basically a very, very humanoid automaton and a fully self-aware being.

(click to show/hide)Then they messed it up by making little Alice an android for no discernable reason other than to invalidate the crisis that led to Kara breaking free of her program.

Gus_Smedstad:

--- Quote from: oddtail on 06 Mar 2020, 06:13 ---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.

--- End quote ---
Ye gods, no. Read “In Memory Yet Green,” the first volume of Asimov’s autobiography. He talks at length about the origin of the laws.

You have to understand that Asimov was writing for a time that was deeply afraid of robots. Robots were universally cartoon monsters, defaulting to “destroy all humans” mode. His earliest robot story, “Robbie,” is steeped in the assumption that the reader assumed robots were murder machines. The whole point of the story was that robots could be gentle and caring.

The three laws evolved out of that, and out of his interactions with John Campbell. Having done that, he immediately started using the explicit formulation of the laws as starting points for stories. Not because he intended to “tear them apart” from the start, but because it was part of his brainstorming process.

Most of the early stories tend to be about the strengths of the laws, and why they’re worded the way they are. Stories like “Runaround” and “Little Lost Robot” aren’t about standard Three Laws robots, they’re about robots where the Three Laws were deliberately altered for specific reasons. “Speedy” in “Runaround” has a strengthened 3rd law because he’s unusually valuable, and the plot’s resolved by invoking the first law. “Nestor” in “Little Lost Robot” has a weakened First Law because he’s working around experiments dangerous to humans, and the story is in part about why weakening the First Law is a Bad Idea.

If you read “The Caves of Steel,” Asimov’s first full-length robot novel, it’s anything but critical of the three laws. It’s a return to the themes of “Robbie,” in that it’s about a main character who hates and fears robots, but eventually comes to accept them once he’s exposed at length to a sympathetic robot (R. Daneel, who acts as his partner during the murder investigation at the insistence of the Spacers).

Sometime in the 80’s or so Asimov started feeling limited by the Laws, but in the 40’s and 50’s they were basic to his plots, not something he was trying to “tear down.”

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