Zeroth Law

Actually explaining the inspration for this is a spoiler.

The Zeroth Law of Robotics is "A robot may not harm humanity,
or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm," and it usually takes
a robot that has hit on this about a tenth of second to realizes that
this justifies taking over the world.

Like a lot of issues concerning the Three Laws, this comes down
to quibbling about the meaning of harm [1]: I can keep children from
running out into the traffic by sawing their legs off but many people
(and not just latte-drinking metrosexuals) might think amputation itself
is a kind of abuse.

An overt takeover, as seen in Jack Williamson's THE HUMANOIDS,
has a certain demoralising effect on the people who are being protected.
It also runs the risk of effect countermeasures early in the take-over
process. It's possible that a robot might think the benefits of openly
controlling humans are outweighed by the damage that this causes.

This leaves subtle takeovers, where the robots and AIs run
things without the humans noticing. Aside from what I consider to be
unfortunate developments in the Foundation universe, are there any
examples of this in SF?




1: Also of "human": if I breed humans to behave differently (breed for
an intuitive grasp of statistics, say) are they still human?
--
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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Zeroth Law
    ... The Zeroth Law of Robotics is "A robot may not harm humanity, ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Zeroth Law
    ... The Zeroth Law of Robotics is "A robot may not harm humanity, ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Zeroth Law
    ... The Zeroth Law of Robotics is "A robot may not harm humanity, ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Zeroth Law
    ... The Zeroth Law of Robotics is "A robot may not harm humanity, ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)