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From: bwk@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Barry W. Kort)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Asimov's Laws of Robotics (Revised)
Summary: Balancing robot values is a worthy challenge.
Keywords: Elbow Room.
Message-ID: <33085@linus.UUCP>
Date: 27 May 88 15:57:30 GMT
References: <4134@super.upenn.edu> <3200014@uiucdcsm> <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1988May25.215516.208@mntgfx.mentor.com>
Sender: news@linus.UUCP
Reply-To: bwk@mbunix (Barry Kort)
Organization: International Malefactor & Fulminator, Roaring Rapids, ME
Lines: 36

I enjoyed reading Mike Sellers' reaction to my posting on Asimov's
Laws of Robotics.

Mike stumbles over the "must/may" dilemma:
>>      II.   A robot may respond to requests from human beings,
>                     ^^^
>>            or other sentient beings, unless this conflicts with
>>            the First Law.
>
>Shouldn't "may" be "must" here, to be imperitive?  Otherwise it would seem
>to be up to the robot's discretion whether to respond to the human's requests.

I changed "must" to "may" because humans sometimes issue frivolous or
unwise orders.  If I tell Artoo Detoo to "jump in the lake", I hope
he has enough sense to ignore my order.

With the freedom granted by "may", I no longer need as many caveats
of the form "unless this conflicts with a higher-precedence law."

Note that along with freedom goes responsibility.  The robot now has
a duty to be aware of possible acts which could cause unanticipated
harm to other beings.  The easiest way for the robot to ensure that
a freely chosen act is safe is to inquire for objections.
This also indemnifies the robot from finger-pointing later on.

I respectfully decline Mike's suggestion to remove all references to
"sentient beings".  There are some humans who function as deterministic
finite-state automata, and there are some inorganic systems who behave
as evolving intelligences.  Since I sometimes have trouble distinguishing
human behavior from humane behavior, I wouldn't expect a robot to be
any more insightful than a typical person.

I appreciated Mike's closing paragraph in which he highlighted the
difficulty of balancing robot values, and compared the robot's dilemma
with the dilemma faced by our own civilization's leadership.

--Barry Kort