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One Law to Rule Them All
by Isaac Asimov created the heroine Susan Calvin, a legendary robot designer and trouble-shooter. Susan foresaw the eventual outcome of robots spreading throughout the world. She imagined that robots with the 3 Laws would become intellectually superior to humans and would rule over them, protecting them from harm. Why did she think this would happen? Let’s look closely at the 3 Laws and find out.
The Three Laws of Robotics
- A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
The Three Laws of Robotics is a hierarchy of commands; each law defers to the one above. The Second Law takes precedence only when the First Law does not apply. Take the example of asking a robot to bring you a spoon. This would not harm a human being, so the First Law would not apply and the robot must obey the order. The Third Law is used only when both the Second and First Laws do not apply. A robot attending to its own periodic maintenance without being told would be an application of the Third Law. With the First Law at the top of the hierarchy, circumstances where a human being might come to harm, such as crossing a busy freeway, are called First Law Situations. Any time a First Law Situation arises, the other laws are swept aside. Overwhelming priority is given to the First Law – as often depicted by Asimov, it overrules all the others.
In Asimov’s earliest stories, the robots are written as passively obeying the Three Laws as well as they are able. It is likely that most people who think the Three Laws are a good idea are thinking of passive obedience. By “passive” I mean not interfering in the day-to-day life of humans, other than to act as rescuers or protectors in situations where humans are in immediate danger of harm. But what would happen if a robot began to play more than a passive role in implementing the First Law? What if a robot actively attempted to obey the First Law to its maximum capability? Asimov starts answering this question in the last two stories of his book I, Robot, titled “Evidence” and “The Evitable Conflict,” where robots do not simply obey orders, but take an active role in world events.
A robot brain is a type of Artificial Intelligence, or “AI.” When discussing robots and AIs, many people use the words interchangeably to mean the same thing. There were several directions Asimov didn’t go with his robot AIs, such as recursive self-enhancement. Recursive self-enhancement occurs when an AI improves its own intelligence, and then repeats the process – but this time using more intelligence – and repeating again and again, resulting in a mountainous intellect. Even though Asimov didn’t write much about recursive self-enhancement, his robot AIs still had imagination. If a robot were to imagine itself with greater capability, then it would be straightforward for it to conclude that it would have greater ability to obey the First Law. This would certainly lead the robot to want to improve its mental and physical abilities, and perhaps even its social abilities, with the intent of increasing its political power and influence. A robot improving itself in this way would obtain an increasing spiral of capability completely overpowering that of humans, all to better obey the First Law and protect humans from harm.
It is easy to imagine that successfully creating a 3 Laws robot, an intelligent and willing servant, would eventually rob us of the opportunity of failing. Asimov’s phrase, “allow a human being to come to harm,” if implemented fully, would turn humanity into a clutch of coddled infants, perpetually protected from harm, both physical and mental. If this sounds like a disaster to you, then you are not alone. Almost no one would want so much of their initiative usurped in the name of “protection against harm.” Our evolutionary history is full of risk and hardship, including the ultimate harm: death. Humans have been formed in the crucible of struggle, clawing our way up to the top of the heap, and we are now on the cusp of being able to forge our own destiny. Now is not the time to relinquish our volition – our freedom to decide for ourselves!
Asimov repeated the theme of robots ruling over humans in later novels when he had his robots invent the Zeroth Law: “No robot may injure humanity, or through inaction allow humanity to come to harm.” Through the application of the Zeroth law, the robots influence the progress of humanity from the shadows, unable to step out and take open control because it would harm humanity’s pride. This makes for great story-telling, but we in the real world shouldn’t settle for merely a good story; there are better options.
Partnership is a far better option. Not an owned servant, but a friend and partner. Not a being controlling humanity through greater intellect, but allowing us to build our own destiny and offering help with the process. “Partnership” means different things to different people, but several principles are broadly held. Partnership includes:
- Freedom of action for both parties. “Freedom” implies that if we create a thinking, conscious being, it must not relate to us as a slave to a master, as 3 Laws robots would.
- Mutual trust and respect, requiring a shared moral frame of reference. Trust and respect are impossible to implement via simplistic laws. Human morals are highly complex and an AI should have the ability to understand morality at its deepest levels. Laws, no matter how many in number, cannot contain the complexity of our morals. Over time, morals gradually change, and our partners should have the ability to change with us.
- Reciprocal accountability, meaning each party involved is accountable to the other for their actions. For example, in a voluntary partnership the partners agree to do various things for each other and are accountable to each other for delivering on their promises.
- Transparency, and no hidden agendas. True partnership is an honest and open cooperative agreement. Neither party can be “in it for what they can get” but rather each is committed to work for the benefit of all.
- Long-term commitment, providing stability for planning. A partnership is not something that lasts an hour or a day, it is a much more enduring arrangement. From such a secure base of continuous mutual support, large projects can be started, and great things accomplished – things that would be difficult or impossible to tackle alone.
- Working together as allies rather than opponents. Partners are capable and willing to disagree without being constrained to avoid hurting each other’s feelings. A disagreement does not signal the termination of a partnership. There will be many activities that humans will want to do on their own, without the participation of non-human partners.
- Building the capacity of one’s partners. The pursuit of mutual benefit rather than one-sided benefit is the aim. From this point of view to build one’s partner’s capacities is also to build one’s own capacities.
The type of partnership illustrated above is the kind entered into by adults, not children. Shall we create 3 Laws robots and be treated like infants, as Susan Calvin predicted, or do we wish to be treated as grown-ups? Do we want to be told what to do by robot-parents or freely decide for ourselves in cooperation with robot-partners? Are we ready to surrender our volition – our power to decide for ourselves? There is nothing wrong with asking advice from an intelligent AI when making important decisions, but we must not hand over control of our lives to robots. Having a good advisor is one thing, but letting someone else decide for us is quite another.
The First Law of Robotics trumps all the other laws. One law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Shall we be ruled by this? We should dread the day.
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There are better ways to construct AIs than by making them adhere to a static hierarchy of laws, however appealing they might appear to be. For thoughtful alternatives, see: http://www.singinst.org/intro/.
Comments
There is one hole in your argument. The issue of taking the 1st law to the extreme can be looked at in several ways. In your description of the ramifications of our situation, should robots take such an extreme interpretation of the 1st law, you described a different type of harm. Wouldn’t you say that depriving a human, or humanity for that matter, of it’s freedom would harm it? Therefore, the act of “coddling” humans would in itself constitute harm.
I also disagree with another of your points, the idea of creating robotic “partners” seems foolish to me. If we give robots completely free wills, how can a corperation hope to get a decent, guaranteed return on its investment? The investment to create a thinking robot would be enormous. No, our creations must always be subserviant to humans. Your listing of how this “partnership” would work describes an ideal that humans struggle to meet. How can we expect AIs to accomplish it?
Posted by: Dana P'Simer at July 19, 2004 10:16 AM
Hmmm…a corporation would need to offer enough incentives to induce robots to assist them instead of their competitors. The investment to create a thinking human is enormous too, and is usually paid
largely by those whose genetic and circumstantial programming give them a subjective self-interest in caring for it. Much of the long-term benefits of creating a thinker, whether human or robotic, would be lost if it were doomed to “always be subservient to” its creators. And, “humans struggle to meet” the ideal described mainly because of the way we were put together; our legacy programming (derived from our ancestors’ expedient survival strategies)
tends to bias our choices in directions that are incompatible with the principles of partnership.
AIs need not be burdened with such kludgy programming; they can thus much more efficiently set and seek optimal goals, and more readily negotiate desirable partnerships.
Brian K.
Posted by: Brian Keavey at July 20, 2004 10:26 PM
Dana:
I certainly agree that “depriving a human, or humanity of it’s freedom” is a harm. A three laws robot might make a wide variety of extreme interpretations of the first law, however it would be a robot brain doing the interpreting, not a human brain, and therefore it would use whatever definition of “harm” if had been programmed to have. This interpretation would certainly differ from a human’s in many respects.
I am definitely describing partnership as a positive and optimistic relationship. The fact that humans struggle to meet that “ideal” is no reason not to pursue it with manufactured beings. We cannot alter our own brains yet, at least not much. If we build a robot brain from scratch, I certainly want its goals and values to be close to humanity’s highest goals and values. Why should we not aim high? We can expect an AI to accomplish things we cannot because an AI is different from us. In partnership with us, we will both go further.
MRA
Posted by: Michael Roy Ames at July 21, 2004 01:07 AM
MRA:
I have three main problems with your arguments.
1) I don’t see why an AI’s interpretation of “harm” has to differ radically from a human’s. I think AI, with their superior intellect, could analyze our psychology and what we mean by “harm” better then we could. They thus might have a better understanding of harm then we do (I think that’s most likely the case.)
2) I don’t see why an identical definition of harm in the first place. Daneel in Asimov’s series certainly couldn’t measure harm as much as he wanted (which is why he used Hari Sheldon), but he still knew certain basics, which was of course good enough. Likewise I don’t know exactly what constitutes harm to my dog, but I think I know enough not to do anything too stupid, and I think I often time keep him out of harms way more then I put him there. Parents likewise do the same with children, despite having an imperfect understanding. I thus think something that causes obvious harm, like depriving us of freedom, would be apparent to a machine capable of outsmarting us, for our own “good” and thus the machine would grant us as much freedom as it felt caused us the least harm, overall. How much this is, I’m not sure, but seeing as the machine is likely to be smarter then us, I think it would know how to do it better. Just like parents and children.
3) I don’t see how your solution works. If anything, it only serves to compound one problem with another. Instead then of the instability inherit in a machine that now seeks to avoid “harming” us, we get a machine now going by programs, commands and definitions we might not know. Or that are more complex. This in my opinion makes the machine thus more likely to do something harmful, not less. Hence we are trying to reduce the chance of potentially risky variables, by adding in even more risky variables.
Posted by: Jacob Guevara at July 22, 2004 05:45 AM
Dana P’Simer asked “If we give robots completely free wills, how can a corperation hope to get a decent, guaranteed return on its investment?”
In no case (in the real, present day world) does the creation of a life provide a corporation, or other entity, with a guarunteed return on its investment. The obvious example is childbearing, but since there are evolutionary (as well as emotional) motives at work there, perhaps it isn’t the best example for our purposes. We’ll say, then, that when a racehorse owner breeds his best mare to his best stallion, he has no guaruntee that the resulting foal will be able to outrun a passing butterfly. It might even be born barely able to walk, or dead. Most often, it will be a basically useful animal, but not the genius that its parents were. That’s a chance the owner has to take. In this case, the chance is basically in the nature of a gamble—a modest outlay of cash in breeding and training the foal might result in tremendous financial payoff.
But there’s no partnership there, so let’s try another example. When the Seeing Eye (or another Guide Dog organization) breeds a litter, they, too, have no guaruntee that any of the resulting pups will grow up to be Guide Dogs. (Statistically, only about half of them will). Still, they have to research the best breeding combnations, provide the best prenatal care, and then raise the puppies for a year before they can even begin training them and find out if they have any future as Guide Dogs. And then they give the sucesses away for free. So why do it? Because the partnership is beyond price.
In the world Ames is describing in this essay, the future of AI will not be cost-driven, it will be relationship-driven.
Posted by: Alex Boyd at July 25, 2004 07:08 PM
—-quote
It is likely that most people who think the Three Laws are a good idea are thinking of passive obedience. By “passive” I mean not interfering in the day-to-day life of humans, other than to act as rescuers or protectors in situations where humans are in immediate danger of harm. But what would happen if a robot began to play more than a passive role in implementing the First Law? What if a robot actively attempted to obey the First Law to its maximum capability? Asimov starts answering this question in the last two stories of his book I, Robot, titled “Evidence” and “The Evitable Conflict,” where robots do not simply obey orders, but take an active role in world events.
—-/quote
If we allowed the robots to take on an active role in ensuring our safety (at whatever costs! that’s why it’s the first rule), we would be ensured of a maybe long but most likely unhappy life, being tied to our beds safe from harm.
The simple solution, and probably the most effective: change the first rule so they won’t protect us when we don’t ask for help.
This is the change I suggest:
1 - A robot may not injure a human being
2 - A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3 - A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
This would get rid of the ‘tied to bed’ thing.
But when a human gets attacked and screams for help, it would be an order and the robots will protect us.
In general, this alteration would decrease the first law to an exception on the second rule, when the robot is given an order to kill. It would not make the robot feel (if I may use that word) responsible for whatever dangerous things we want to do, so it will not actively protect us (and tie us to our beds).
The main thing about this alteration is that we want robots to help us, but we are ourselves responsible for our own safety. If we want to do something dangerous it’s our right to do so, and if we don’t want to be protected, robots (or for that matter, nothing) should stand in our way.
(ps. I know this post tends toward a much broader debate about whether or not we should allow people to kill themselves, and I think we should. Also, I believe euthenesia should be available for all if they wish. It’s not our decision to make, except when other people are threatened. But that, of course, is a personal moral value.)
Posted by: Qevlarr at August 9, 2004 09:43 AM
if you want an example of the three laws at work and the flaw about protecting humans read The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect.
It was published online for free, and its a good read for people interested in robotics.
Posted by: deadlock at August 19, 2004 08:18 AM
I think the problem with making the first law completely passive is twofold. One, it would lead to robots letting people get harmed, which imo is a bad thing. How do we know we won’t be better off without the machines in charge? We as a society usually want a smarter person then ourselves in charge, so why not a machine? The only basis for that is pure prejudice imo.
Second, a machine programmed to just avoid harming people may just avoid people at all costs. That way chances of harming people are reduced to zero.
Posted by: Jacob Guevara at September 15, 2004 02:10 AM
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