Re: Zeroth Law
- From: ted@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Ted Nolan <tednolan>)
- Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:00:34 GMT
In article <f7gjfn$5ei$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Anthony Nance <nance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
James Nicoll <jdnicoll@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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?
If "subtle" and "not noticing" are key here, then I think
Budrys' _Michaelmas_ fits.
Looong time since I read this, but wasn't the world-controling AI built
by a guy to get free long-distance phone calls, and just sort of grew?
The key thing though, was the same guy was still in control of it.
Of course when he passed away, I suppose it would be free agent.
Ted
.
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