From: tmoran@bix.com (Tom Moran)
Subject: Re: Ethics & Isaac Asimov
Date: 1999/01/20
Date: 1999-01-20T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <36a57131.34731351@news.pacbell.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 36A56985.1B891566@interact.net.au
If a thrown stone is allowed as a (particularly dumb) robot, then it
surely may violate the first law, and the laws of physics may cause it
to violate the human's *intent* in the second law (though we in
computers have lots of experience with the difference between
following a human's orders literally vs doing what he wanted). The
stone generally tries, to the best of its ability, not to violate the
second law. The same applies of course to other things (General
Patton's car caused his death).
As to software, I suppose a copy of Pagemaker used to make a
recruiting poster might eventually cause harm to a human, so, being
very generous about interpreting words like "cause", software also can
violate the first law. Same as above re the second law, and software
usually tries even less hard to obey the third law.
Perhaps Asimov's laws need a little work. ;)
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1999-01-20 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1999-01-20 0:00 Ethics & Isaac Asimov G.M. Wallace
1999-01-20 0:00 ` Tom Moran [this message]
1999-01-20 0:00 ` Marin David Condic
1999-01-20 0:00 ` Larry Elmore
1999-01-20 0:00 ` Marin David Condic
1999-01-21 0:00 ` robert_dewar
1999-01-20 0:00 ` Carl Bauman
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