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The movie "I, Robot" is a muddled affair. It relies on shoddy
pseudo-science and a general sense of unease that artificial
(non-carbon based) intelligent life forms seem to provoke in us.
But it goes no deeper than a comic book treatment of the
important themes that it broaches. I, Robot is just another -
and relatively inferior - entry is a long line of far better
movies, such as "Blade Runner" and "Artificial Intelligence".
Sigmund Freud said that we have an uncanny reaction to the
inanimate. This is probably because we know that – pretensions
and layers of philosophizing aside – we are nothing but
recursive, self aware, introspective, conscious machines.
Special machines, no doubt, but machines all the same.
Consider the James bond movies. They constitute a
decades-spanning gallery of human paranoia. Villains change:
communists, neo-Nazis, media moguls. But one kind of villain is
a fixture in this psychodrama, in this parade of human phobias:
the machine. James Bond always finds himself confronted with
hideous, vicious, malicious machines and automata.
It was precisely to counter this wave of unease, even terror,
irrational but all-pervasive, that Isaac Asimov, the late Sci-fi
writer (and scientist) invented the Three Laws of Robotics:
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 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. Many have noticed the lack of consistency
and, therefore, the inapplicability of these laws when
considered together.
First, they are not derived from any coherent worldview or
background. To be properly implemented and to avoid their
interpretation in a potentially dangerous manner, the robots in
which they are embedded must be equipped with reasonably
comprehensive models of the physical universe and of human
society.
Without such contexts, these laws soon lead to intractable
paradoxes (experienced as a nervous breakdown by one of Asimov's
robots). Conflicts are ruinous in automata based on recursive
functions (Turing machines), as all robots are. Godel pointed at
one such self destructive paradox in the "Principia
Mathematica", ostensibly a comprehensive and self consistent
logical system. It was enough to discredit the whole magnificent
edifice constructed by Russel and Whitehead over a decade.
Some argue against this and say that robots need not be automata
in the classical, Church-Turing, sense. That they could act
according to heuristic, probabilistic rules of decision making.
There are many other types of functions (non-recursive) that can
be incorporated in a robot, they remind us.
True, but then, how can one guarantee that the robot's behavior
is fully predictable ? How can one be certain that robots will
fully and always implement the three laws? Only recursive
systems are predictable in principle, though, at times, their
complexity makes it impossible.
This article deals with some commonsense, basic problems raised
by the Laws. The next article in this series analyses the Laws
from a few vantage points: philosophy, artificial intelligence
and some systems theories.
An immediate question springs to mind: HOW will a robot identify
a human being? Surely, in a future of perfect androids,
constructed of organic materials, no superficial, outer scanning
will suffice. Structure and composition will not be sufficient
differentiating factors.
There are two ways to settle this very practical issue: one is
to endow the robot with the ability to conduct a Converse Turing
Test (to separate humans from other life forms) - the other is
to somehow "barcode" all the robots by implanting some remotely
readable signaling device inside them (such as a RFID - Radio
Frequency ID chip). Both present additional difficulties.
The second solution will prevent the robot from positively
identifying humans. He will be able identify with any certainty
robots and only robots (or humans with such implants). This is
ignoring, for discussion's sake, defects in manufacturing or
loss of the implanted identification tags. And what if a robot
were to get rid of its tag? Will this also be classified as a
"defect in manufacturing"?
In any case, robots will be forced to make a binary choice. They
will be compelled to classify one type of physical entities as
robots – and all the others as "non-robots". Will non-robots
include monkeys and parrots? Yes, unless the manufacturers equip
the robots with digital or optical or molecular representations
of the human figure (masculine and feminine) in varying
positions (standing, sitting, lying down). Or unless all humans
are somehow tagged from birth.
These are cumbersome and repulsive solutions and not very
effective ones. No dictionary of human forms and positions is
likely to be complete. There will always be the odd physical
posture which the robot would find impossible to match to its
library. A human disk thrower or swimmer may easily be
classified as "non-human" by a robot - and so might amputated
invalids.
What about administering a converse Turing Test?
This is even more seriously flawed. It is possible to design a
test, which robots will apply to distinguish artificial life
forms from humans. But it will have to be non-intrusive and not
involve overt and prolonged communication. The alternative is a
protracted teletype session, with the human concealed behind a
curtain, after which the robot will issue its verdict: the
respondent is a human or a robot. This is unthinkable.
Moreover, the application of such a test will "humanize" the
robot in many important respects. Human identify other humans
because they are human, too. This is called empathy. A robot
will have to be somewhat human to recognize another human being,
it takes one to know one, the saying (rightly) goes.
Let us assume that by some miraculous way the problem is
overcome and robots unfailingly identify humans. The next
question pertains to the notion of "injury" (still in the First
Law). Is it limited only to physical injury (the elimination of
the physical continuity of human tissues or of the normal
functioning of the human body)?
Should "injury" in the First Law encompass the no less serious
mental, verbal and social injuries (after all, they are all
known to have physical side effects which are, at times, no less
severe than direct physical "injuries")? Is an insult an
"injury"? What about being grossly impolite, or psychologically
abusive? Or offending religious sensitivities, being politically
incorrect - are these injuries? The bulk of human (and,
therefore, inhuman) actions actually offend one human being or
another, have the potential to do so, or seem to be doing so.
Consider surgery, driving a car, or investing money in the stock
exchange. These "innocuous" acts may end in a coma, an accident,
or ruinous financial losses, respectively. Should a robot refuse
to obey human instructions which may result in injury to the
instruction-givers?
Consider a mountain climber – should a robot refuse to hand him
his equipment lest he falls off a cliff in an unsuccessful bid
to reach the peak? Should a robot refuse to obey human commands
pertaining to the crossing of busy roads or to driving
(dangerous) sports cars?
Which level of risk should trigger robotic refusal and even
prophylactic intervention? At which stage of the interactive
man-machine collaboration should it be activated? Should a robot
refuse to fetch a ladder or a rope to someone who intends to
commit suicide by hanging himself (that's an easy one)?
Should he ignore an instruction to push his master off a cliff
(definitely), help him climb the cliff (less assuredly so),
drive him to the cliff (maybe so), help him get into his car in
order to drive him to the cliff... Where do the responsibility
and obeisance bucks stop?
Whatever the answer, one thing is clear: such a robot must be
equipped with more than a rudimentary sense of judgment, with
the ability to appraise and analyse complex situations, to
predict the future and to base his decisions on very fuzzy
algorithms (no programmer can foresee all possible
circumstances). To me, such a "robot" sounds much more dangerous
(and humanoid) than any recursive automaton which does NOT
include the famous Three Laws.
Moreover, what, exactly, constitutes "inaction"? How can we set
apart inaction from failed action or, worse, from an action
which failed by design, intentionally? If a human is in danger
and the robot tries to save him and fails – how could we
determine to what extent it exerted itself and did everything it
could?
How much of the responsibility for a robot's inaction or partial
action or failed action should be imputed to the manufacturer –
and how much to the robot itself? When a robot decides finally
to ignore its own programming – how are we to gain information
regarding this momentous event? Outside appearances can hardly
be expected to help us distinguish a rebellious robot from a
lackadaisical one.
The situation gets much more complicated when we consider states
of conflict.
Imagine that a robot is obliged to harm one human in order to
prevent him from hurting another. The Laws are absolutely
inadequate in this case. The robot should either establish an
empirical hierarchy of injuries – or an empirical hierarchy of
humans. Should we, as humans, rely on robots or on their
manufacturers (however wise, moral and compassionate) to make
this selection for us? Should we abide by their judgment which
injury is the more serious and warrants an intervention?
A summary of the Asimov Laws would give us the following "truth
table":
A robot must obey human commands except if:
Obeying them is likely to cause injury to a human, or Obeying
them will let a human be injured. A robot must protect its own
existence with three exceptions:
That such self-protection is injurious to a human; That such
self-protection entails inaction in the face of potential injury
to a human; That such self-protection results in robot
insubordination (failing to obey human instructions). Trying to
create a truth table based on these conditions is the best way
to demonstrate the problematic nature of Asimov's idealized yet
highly impractical world.
Here is an exercise:
Imagine a situation (consider the example below or one you make
up) and then create a truth table based on the above five
conditions. In such a truth table, "T" would stand for
"compliance" and "F" for non-compliance.
Example:
A radioactivity monitoring robot malfunctions. If it
self-destructs, its human operator might be injured. If it does
not, its malfunction will equally seriously injure a patient
dependent on his performance.
One of the possible solutions is, of course, to introduce
gradations, a probability calculus, or a utility calculus. As
they are phrased by Asimov, the rules and conditions are of a
threshold, yes or no, take it or leave it nature. But if robots
were to be instructed to maximize overall utility, many
borderline cases would be resolved.
Still, even the introduction of heuristics, probability, and
utility does not help us resolve the dilemma in the example
above. Life is about inventing new rules on the fly, as we go,
and as we encounter new challenges in a kaleidoscopically
metamorphosing world. Robots with rigid instruction sets are ill
suited to cope with that.
About the author:
Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism
Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is
a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press
International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health
and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory,
Suite101 and searcheurope.com.
Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com
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