The three laws of robotics are an invention of the writer of Science-fiction Isaac Asimov. These laws aim at making the behavior of the robots inoffensive for the human ones.

Three Laws of Robotics

In an imagined future, Robot S humanoïdes able to reason and to almost make all the tasks specific to the Man would be built. To counter the fear of the “syndrome of Frankenstein” (which actually goes back to the legend of the Golem) of creations being turned over against their creator, the robots would be built from three Axiome S, called Loi S of robotics :

  • First Law: a robot should not cause wrong to human or, remaining passive, let human suffer a damage.
  • Second Law: a robot must obey the orders of human, except if the order given can lead to enfreindre the First Law .
  • Third Law: a robot must protect its own existence as a long time as such a protection is not in contradiction with the First Law and/or the Second Law .

In spite of these three laws which make a robot inoffensive (contrary to the human beings), in the work of Asimov the syndrome of Frankenstein and especially the fear of human of seeing itself replacing by machines is stronger. The robots are thus prohibited on Ground, their use being reserved with the space colonies.

These laws are coded with deepest brain positronic of the robots and cannot in no case to be modified. The many news and novels of Asimov putting in scene the robots for the near total are organized around the faults of interpretations by the robots of these laws.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary , the news lying which mentions the first law is the first passage in which the robot-like word is used. Asimov even of it was not conscious for him, considering that the word existed already, by analogy with similar mechanics, hydraulics and other terms referring to sciences applied.

The three laws form an organized principle and a unifying topic for the fiction of Asimov. They appear in the series on the Robots and other stories related to this topic, but also in its series “Lucky starr” of science fiction directed towards a public of young adults. Other authors using the fictitious universe of Asimov adopted them and of the references (often parodic) appear in the science fiction but also in other kinds. The researchers in the field of the artificial intelligence, working in the creation of real machines with some of the properties of the robots of Asimov, speculate in the role which these laws could have in the future.

History of the Laws of Robotics

Before Asimov, the majority of the artificial intelligences were subjected to the complex of Frankenstein, that Asimov found unbearably tedious: “The Robots are created then destroyed by their creators, the robots were created and destroyed their creators”. Actually, that was not an inviolable rule. In December 1938, Lester del Rey publishes Elen O' loy the history of a robot so close to the human one that it falls in love with its creator and becomes his ideal woman (comparable with the myth of Pygmalion and Galatée). The next month Otto Binder publishes a news I, Robot (me Robot), describing a robot sympathetic nerve of the name of Adam Link, misunderstood creature moved by the love and the honor. It was the beginning of a series of ten news; the following year, Adam Link' S Revenge (1940) described thinking Adam, “a robot should never kill human of its own will”.

May 7th, 1939, Asimov attends a conference of the Queens Science Fiction Society , where it meets Binder, of which it admired the news. Three days later, Asimov begins the drafting of its “own version of a robot sympathetic nerve and noble”, its 14th news. Thirteen days later it presents Robbie to John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding Science-fiction. Campbell refuses it, under pretext of her too great resemblance to " Elen O' Loy" of El Rey. Frederik Pohl, editor of Astonishing magazine, publishes Robbie in its magazine the following year.

Law Zero

In the work of Asimov two particular robots appear, R. Daneel Olivaw and R. Giskard Reventlov. By their reflections, they conclude that the Three Laws are incomplete, and that the robots must also consider the protection of the Humanité as a whole. These robots as follows formulate Law Zero of robotics:

  • Law Zero: a robot cannot harm humanity nor, remaining passive, allow that humanity suffers from an evil.

The Three Laws are thus amended as follows:

  • First Law: a robot cannot carry reached to an human being nor, remaining passive, leave this human being exposed to the danger, except in the event of contradiction with Law Zero.

  • Second Law: a robot must obey the orders given by the human beings, except so of such kinds are in contradiction with Law Zero or the First Law.
  • Third Law: a robot must protect its existence insofar as this protection is not in contradiction with Law Zero, the First or the Second Law.

The consequences of Law Zero are considerable: it gives the right to the robots to attack Men, if these Men endanger humanity. It is precisely the principal topic in film I robot, or I.A VIKI (main memory of the robot-like firm) arrives at the logical conclusion that the greatest threat for the Man is the Man even and decides enfreindre to him the 1st law to protect Humanity.

Legal aspect

One can imagine that these three laws of robotics, because of the development of the autonomous robots will be one day transposed in the substantive law.

This point of view, the three laws of robotics can analyze several manners according to the nature which the law or the Constitution will allot in the future to the robots.

In the actual position of the right, the robot is a piece of furniture and is thus endowed with no understanding. Cannot thus weigh on a robot any form of contractual, criminal or quasi-criminal obligation, even less criminal responsibility.

On the other hand the robot, as a piece of furniture, is also a product. The three laws of robotics could thus be included/understood like a special provision regulating a precise type of industrial product, the robot. The ignorance or the non-observance by a robot of the one of the three laws of robotics would thus rise from the general rule of articles 1386 and following Civil code, which lay out that a defective product engages the responsibility for that which manufactured it. Therefore, in the actual position of the right, the responsibility, and consequently the obligation, as for the observation by the robot of the three laws, weigh on the manufacturer of the robot and to even in no case on the robot him.

Let us note that the three laws aim before all the protection of the natural persons. Its writers have, the text makes an obvious priority of it, expressly aimed at framing the activity of a product a priori regarded as dangerous. Indeed, it is made state, from the text, of a risk specific of attack to the people, specifically related with the robots.

But it must be also considered that the robot could one day become prone of right. From such a point of view, the extreme ambiguity which raises a still unknown concept, namely the possible understanding of which could be equipped a conscious machine, or at least " intelligente" , could not find, for lack of a deep modification of the Civil code, that a Praetorian solution. Indeed, it would be up to the Court of appeal to come to a conclusion about the autonomous responsibility for the robot, since a manufacturer would raise that he cannot be responsible for the damage caused by the robot on the base of article 1386-1 of the Civil code, nor that the guard of the robot, namely his owner, could not see either his responsibility committed on the base for article 1384, with the reason which the robot would be able to make a decision in an autonomous way. At first sight, this means, which would make leave the robot the field of the thing (in civil law), to give him the statute of the person, or a new category of nobody, holding at the same time of the thing within the meaning of the subparagraph first of article 1384 and the employee within the meaning of the fifth subparagraph of the same article, could be retained by the courts dealing with the substance of a case without incurring the cassation: indeed, the high jurisdiction could only reject this means, basic fault legal. As a subject of the civil responsibility or penal, the robot does not exist in French right.

It goes from there differently to the United States, or the supreme court, source of substantive law and not judge of the right like the Court of appeal, could on the contrary consider a robot responsible for its acts and it is in the sense that the three laws of robotics were written. In a species or, a robot having ignored one of the three laws, its understanding, sufficient, would be unambiguous, the Supreme court could validate the concept of responsibility for the robot, by making a new category of anybody.

In France, only a new text could insert the three laws in the right.

See too

Simple: Three Laws off Robotics

Random links:List Belgian writers alphabetically | Réticulée formation | Dunkirk-Scheldt channel | Krieg | Tabula Shaved (video game)