ech@pyuxll.UUCP (Ned Horvath) (08/15/83)
You have the question the wrong way around. History has demonstrated that an entity with intelligence comparable to that of a human being cannot be easily held by mere physical restraints. You will NEED to build in the three laws simply because it won't be practical to physically restrict (intelligent) robots. Of course, history has also demonstrated that it is difficult to program humans with the three laws; they translate quite nicely into what most governments would accept as a definition of "patriotism." =Ned=
davidl@orca.UUCP (David Levine) (08/18/83)
The following article cropped up in this evening's paper and I thought that, with the recent interest in this net about how SF prophecies are coming true (someone's query about waldos recently, for one thing) it might be of interest. It seems that the time when the Three Laws of Robotics are required is fast approaching... faster, in fact, than the time when we can build machines which are smart enough to obey them! (This raises intriguing questions about ethics and technolgy which I don't feel like going into right now.) The alternatives are to surround the robots with safeguards (which reminds me of the laws requiring automobiles to be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag) or to make them smarter. The additional processor power required to interpret and obey the Three Laws is presently more expensive than mechanical safeguards (e.g. a fence around the robot) and so we won't be seeing moral robots for some time, if ever. A thought to think about: at what point does the phenomenal expense of intelligent robots outweigh the cost in lives and injury incurred by dumb ones? (This, of course, assumes that robots smart enough to distinguish a "human being" from a trash can, never mind avoid harming one, are technically possible.) Given normal business ethics, is there any situation in which the Three Laws would be preferable (i.e. cheaper in the long run) than mechanical safeguards? ---------------------------------------- The following article appeared in The (Portland) Oregonian, Aug. 11, 1983, p. A18. Reprinted without permission. ROBOT FIRM LIABLE IN DEATH By Tim Kiska, Knight-Ridder News Service DETROIT -- The manufacturer of a one-ton robot that killed a worker at Ford Motor Co.'s Flat Rock casting plant must pay the man's family $10 million, a Wayne County Circuit jury ruled Tuesday. The jury of three men and three women deliberated for 2 1/2 hours before announcing the decision against Unit Handling Systems in a suit by the family of Robert Williams, who was killed Jan. 25, 1979. Unit Handling is a division of Litton Industries. It is believed to be the largest personal injury award in state history. The case was tried before Judge Charles Kaufman. At the time of his death, Williams, 25, of Dearborn Heights, Mich., was one of three men who operated an electronic parts- retrieval system at Ford's Flat Rock plant. The plant has since been closed. The system, made by Unit Handling, was designed to have a robot autoamatically recover parts from a storage area at the plant. On the day of his death, Williams was asked to climb into a storage rack to retreive parts because the robot was malfunctioning at the time and not operating fast enough, according to the Williams family's attorneys. The robot, meanwhile, continued to work silently, and a protruding segment of its arm smashed into Williams' head, killing him instantly. The robot kept operating while Williams lay deadfor about 30 minutes. His body was discovered by workers who became concerned because he was missing. Attorneys for the family said the robot should have been equipped with devices to warn workers that it was operating. "If they didn't want people up there when the robot was moving around, they should have installed safety devices," said Joan Lovell, one of the two attorneys representing the family. "Human beings are more important than production." The jury's award went to Williams' widow, Sandra, their three children, ages 8, 6, and 5, his mother, and five sisters. The 6-year-old was celebrating his second birthday on the day of his father's death. "They were an extremely close family," said Lovell. "I've seen a lot of people who have been injured, but this family was particularly devastated by this loss." -- end of article -- -- David D. Levine (...decvax!tektronix!tekecs!davidl) [UUCP] (...tekecs!davidl.tektronix@rand-relay) [ARPA]