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Hey there, I was reading some of tne recent Prometheus threads and had a thought, but didn't want to derail the whole thread....

Since we're almost all sci-fi fans, we should all be familiar with Asimov's three laws. Now, we shouuld all be familiar with movies and media that follow this (star trek, i robot, AI, etc)... but i have also noticed something of a slow movement to portraying synthetic life forms without these restrictions (aliens, blade runner, etc)


If true synthetic life can be created, do you think that the developers will follow the three laws, or will we potentially see Nexus 6's and the like running around?

Well with blade runner and aliens being 1986 and 1982 we aren't exactly talking about a recent trend. Killer robots predated Asimovs three laws too, so it's probably cyclical.

I think this thread would have more discussion potential if you said what the three laws are. Seeing how there are those of us who don't know, and may want to contribute without doing google-research.

Here you go

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Asimov%27s+3+laws

Castiel wrote:Here you go

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Asimov%27s+3+laws

Hence the "might want to discuss, but don't want to google-research," comment I made that you seemed to miss. But clever. Good for you

timetowaste85 wrote:

Castiel wrote:Here you go

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Asimov%27s+3+laws

Hence the "might want to discuss, but don't want to google-research," comment I made that you seemed to miss. But clever. Good for you

I do what I can! (I couldn't remember so I figured i'd save others some legwork )

timetowaste85 wrote:

Castiel wrote:Here you go

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Asimov%27s+3+laws

Hence the "might want to discuss, but don't want to google-research," comment I made that you seemed to miss. But clever. Good for you

/name is timetowaste
/too busy to type "three laws" in search engine.

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

Or listen to the great man himself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWJJnQybZlk

Being a avid Aismov fan I would like to think we can create a synthetic life form though unfortunately I doubt it will be true A.I that is typical portrayed. My reason is that a Computer can't react differently than the way it has been programmed. Intelligent adapts to new experiences, it can change. Robots are Static and can't deviate.

Nonsense. Robots will be tools. They will be used like tools.

Then the wiener dogs will learn how to control them.

Then the cats will pay.

The movie "I Robot" did not feature the three laws properly.



Besides, that movie was a base slander on Asimov's work on the nature of humanity... via the inhuman. They turned it into a 'Terminator' style action flick... which wasn't even all that good. At least, I thought it wasn't all that good.

Vulcan wrote:The movie "I Robot" did not feature the three laws properly.

Spoiler:

The robot that killed the old man would have been rendered dysfunctional by the attempt, no matter how logically it was preseneted. The laws aren't just programmed in, they are imprinted on the matrix of the positronic brain. Breaking the laws breaks the brain.

For the same reason, the 'red light versions' would also have destroyed themselves. Plot FAIL.

Besides, that movie was a base slander on Asimov's work on the nature of humanity... via the inhuman. They turned it into a 'Terminator' style action flick... which wasn't even all that good. At least, I thought it wasn't all that good.

I Robot is loosely based on Asimov's short story 'Lost Little Robot' about a robot on a Space station which is built without the first law and develops a superiority complex.
If a film is based off a book and stars Will Smith, it going to be nothing like the book (e.g I Am legend by Richard Matheson) and mostly likely terrible

Nakor The BlueRider wrote:

Vulcan wrote:The movie "I Robot" did not feature the three laws properly.

Spoiler:

The robot that killed the old man would have been rendered dysfunctional by the attempt, no matter how logically it was preseneted. The laws aren't just programmed in, they are imprinted on the matrix of the positronic brain. Breaking the laws breaks the brain.

For the same reason, the 'red light versions' would also have destroyed themselves. Plot FAIL.

Besides, that movie was a base slander on Asimov's work on the nature of humanity... via the inhuman. They turned it into a 'Terminator' style action flick... which wasn't even all that good. At least, I thought it wasn't all that good.

I Robot is loosely based on Asimov's short story 'Lost Little Robot' about a robot on a Space station which is built without the first law and develops a superiority complex.
If a film is based off a book and stars Will Smith, it going to be nothing like the book (e.g I Am legend by Richard Matheson) and mostly likely terrible

He wasn't built without the first law. He was built with a modified first law that removed the "or though inaction" part. (Because he was being used at a research station that had small amounts of radiation, and the robots there kept trying to rescue the humans.)

It's actually an incredibly interesting short story that explores the flaws of the three laws.

D'oh my mistake. I really like the I Robot collection of short stories, Susan Calvin is a great character. Lair! is very entertaining.

Given that I consider the idea of synthetic life somewhat overblown, no I don't think we'd need them. A artificial intelligence is just that, artificial. It is only capable of doing what we program it to do. It isn't alive, no matter how sophisticated we make it.

It's impossible to program 'sentience.'

LordofHats wrote:Given that I consider the idea of synthetic life somewhat overblown, no I don't think we'd need them. A artificial intelligence is just that, artificial. It is only capable of doing what we program it to do. It isn't alive, no matter how sophisticated we make it.

It's impossible to program 'sentience.'

I totally disagree. "Sentience" was programed into us by natural selection and survival of the fittest. There's no reason we can't program it again. Silicon chips carrying electrons aren't all that different from carbon cells carrying electrons.

And, what exactly is "alive" will be a hot debate in the coming decades.

To program something you must be able to quantify it to the point that a 5 year old mentally challenged child can understand it. We can't define the word sentience to the level necessary to effectively program a machine to do it and at the end of the day, the best we'll be able to do is program a machine to act like it is which isn't the same thing.

EDIT: Self-worth is effectively a valueless principle. It can't be programmed.

LordofHats wrote:To program something you must be able to quantify it to the point that a 5 year old mentally challenged child can understand it. We can't define the word sentience to the level necessary to effectively program a machine to do it and at the end of the day, the best we'll be able to do is program a machine to act like it is which isn't the same thing.

Acting like you have sentience is sentience itself. Our thoughts and feelings are all just chemicals and electrical impulses. There's no reason we can't replicate that, eventually.

LordofHats wrote:We can't define the word sentience to the level necessary to effectively program a machine to do it and at the end of the day, the best we'll be able to do is program a machine to act like it is which isn't the same thing.

Turing Test.

Acting like you have sentience is sentience itself

There is a difference between recognizing yourself as unique within your surroundings and acting like you can recognize yourself as unique. One requires rational thought and the other just requires imitation.

Our thoughts and feelings are all just chemicals and electrical impulses.

The brain is an insanely complex machine. We still don't understand how it really works beyond the most basic level. I'd argue we never will. What about our brains gives us a sense of self-worth? How can that be quantified and programed? What mechanism in the brain enables us to perceive the self as unique and how can that be measured? When talking about sentience we're talking about things that just can't be measured (not in the way we need them to be).

The idea of AI has been overblown in media for decades and I think a lot of people are going to be in for a rude awakening that AI as we commonly think of it is always going to be fictional. AI researchers gave up on the illusion a long time ago, but the general public hasn't caught up.

Turing Test.

The Turing Test is somewhat of a crock (ignoring that it is also a formula for which no perfect answer can be found which pretty much rules out an actual solution). Besides, in Turing's paper where he proposed the test he never conceived a machine actually be sentient. He conceived a machine that could pretend it was.

LordofHats wrote:
There is a difference between recognizing yourself as unique within your surroundings and acting like you can recognize yourself as unique. One requires rational thought and the other just requires imitation.

The lie, or imitation, also requires rational thought if it is to be convincing.

You don't think a parrot is sentient because it squawks out "I'm Captain Jack Sparrow!"

LordofHats wrote:
What about our brains gives us a sense of self-worth?

Nothing.

Self-worth is most likely a social artifact, contradictory as that may seem.

LordofHats wrote:
When talking about sentience we're talking about things that just can't be measured (not in the way we need them to be).

Well, not yet. But 50 years ago politics was an art, you needed grounding n philosophy to study it, now you get dudes sitting in computer labs crunching numbers, or running game theory.

We have proof that semi sentient robots exist. They look nearly human and can say and do things humans might find distressing or unethical.
/Ed Millibund

dogma wrote:The lie, or imitation, also requires rational thought if it is to be convincing.

Not really (but this is also a criticism of the Turing Test's basic premise EDIT: From those who have missed his point since the 50's that is). To be convincing one just has to trick the observer into thinking something. The machine doesn't have to be rational at all, but the programmer does to create an appropriate imitation. From that slights of hand are enough to trick people.

LordofHats wrote:
Not really (but this is also a criticism of the Turing Test's basic premise EDIT: From those who have missed his point since the 50's that is). To be convincing one just has to trick the observer into thinking something. The machine doesn't have to be rational at all, but the programmer does to create an appropriate imitation. From that slights of hand are enough to trick people.

Sure, and they also require rationality. Its surprisingly easy to trick people, and people place far too much weight on what we call "rationality".

The argument goes both ways: you don't need to be rational, only your parents do.

Nakor The BlueRider wrote:

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

Or listen to the great man himself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWJJnQybZlk

Being a avid Aismov fan I would like to think we can create a synthetic life form though unfortunately I doubt it will be true A.I that is typical portrayed. My reason is that a Computer can't react differently than the way it has been programmed. Intelligent adapts to new experiences, it can change. Robots are Static and can't deviate.

I dunno man, Ive had computers do some pretty weird gak that I didnt want it to do. Ergo, we are all going to die

KingCracker wrote:Ergo, we are all going to die

Of course, that is true even without computers.

There was an episode of a TV show, I think it was Numbers, in which there was a super computer that overcame the Turing test. The trick, in the end, was that the super computer had only been programmed to give the illusion of overcoming the test. Everyone acted like it was a normal super computer so everyone assumed it was, but really all it could do was the one thing: pretend to beat the test.

edit: oops

The way computing power is trending, we'll have computers with the ability to carry out 10^14 calculations per second (cps) in less than 15 years that should only cost around $1000.00. That's on the low end of the estimated cps of the human brain once you normalize for the massively parallel nature of our brains. Using these computers, other humans will build stronger, faster computers. Later, rinse, repeat.

Once these systems are up around the cps level of the entire population, questions like these will be completely and totally irrelevant. O.o

Of course computers will eventually have AI. Soon people will realize that the dead doesnt need their brains anymore, and so those will be plugged in and used like computers. Scary!!!!!!! OOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooOOOOOO!!

The Nexus 6 series had combat models, so presumably they don't follow the three laws programming structure.

I guess having those limitations (3 Laws) would probably stop Synthetic life being 'alive' as such as the can't do anything, they don't choose not to but are forced not to.

I'd love to see some Synthetic life, I think the first we will see won't be human replications at any rate.

Vulcan wrote:The movie "I Robot" did not feature the three laws properly.

The less that movie is talked about the better. A couple of pics from a well known website that I think summarise it quite well: