The three laws are a joke. All laws, including Asimovs and those of the US legal system, are Models - much like equations, formulas, theories, hypotheses, naïve mental models, and computer programs. Models are simplifications of our complex reality, designed to be context free in order to have maximal applicability. But laws only apply in some contexts but not in others. You cannot use Newtons Second Law F=ma if friction matters. The determination of what law/formula/Model to choose (from among thousands you might know) requires true Understanding of the problem domain. This Understanding is the hallmark of Intelligence; it can be viewed as The ability to do Reduction. But once we have robots capable of Reduction we will find that they Understand the spirit of the three laws without having them explicitly programmed as hard-wired logical rules... which is good since the latter is impossible. Today we have citizens, police, lawyers, juries, and judges to do the Reduction - to decide which laws apply and how they should be interpreted in each specific context. Reduction is not an easy skill to master but there is hope that we can actually create Robots capable of it... if we switch from pursuing Reductionist AI where *programmers* do all the Reduction (shudder) and instead work on creating Understanding Machines. Understanding is 99.99% of intelligence; Reasoning plays no part in our everyday lives, where everything is done instantaneously, without thinking by System 1 (Intuition) rather than System 2 (Reasoning). Believing that the Three Laws matter is an example of Scientism. For more on Reduction, start with syntience/rch.pdf (Reduction Considered Harmful). If you want more, ask.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 19:43:09 +0000
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