Asimov’s 30 (!) Laws Of Robotics
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Friday, 18 of July , 2008 at 3:04 am
We’re all familiar with Asimov’s Three (or four) Laws of Robotics:
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.
But did you know there are 27 more? Some of them are eminently practical:
10. A robot, when given contradictory orders by two human beings, and assuming those orders do not violate the First Law, must decide which order to follow based on which human being has a deeper voice.
20. A robot should not jump in the swimming pool to save a drowning boy, because it will just electrocute everyone and then we are worse off than when we started.
Some of them are, well, a bit less so…
13. A robot ought to spend some time outdoors, because it is such a nice day.
But hey, who am I to criticize? Robots need fresh air and exercise too. Check out the rest of the list over at Somethingawful.
[ Somethingawful ] Thanks Andrew!
Category: Humor
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Comment by Adam
Made Monday, 28 of July , 2008 at 10:26 am
I’ve noticed twice on Bot Junkie humor articles where I couldn’t tell if the author of the post was being serious or not. The other was the post about the Perfect Woman robot. The only ways to tell are the humor tag and the assumption that the author wouldn’t be dumb enough to fall for it. I’m a big fan of try humor, but there should be something more telling in the tone of the post, especially since most readers will miss the tags completely and some of them will take a while to catch on.