Robbie the Robot!

Dear Friends: With all the talk about Artificial Intelligence lately there is rising concern about the dangers of letting machines run our lives without some serious safeguards. Even Steven Hawking expressed reservations about A.I. and suggested we develop some form of control mechanism on this new and emerging technology so that things don't  take a nasty turn some time in the future!

With this in mind I would like to remind everyone about Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics! (Robotics was a catch-all  phrase for early versions of Artificial Intelligence.)

The Three Laws of Robotics (often shortened to The Three Laws or known as Asimov's Laws) are a set of rules devised by the science fiction author Isaac Asimov. The rules were introduced in his 1942 short story "Runaround" (included in the 1950 collection I, Robot), although they had been foreshadowed in a few earlier stories. The Three Laws, quoted as being from the "Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.", are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the 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 Laws.

It might not be a bad idea to adapt these laws into some kind of a twenty first century guideline folks!

The way I see it anyway!

                          1953                                                                                 2453