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"Three Laws"-Compliant: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
Before around 1940, almost every [[Speculative Fiction]] story involving robots followed the Frankenstein model, i.e., [[Crush! Kill! Destroy!]]. Fed up with this, a young [[Isaac Asimov]] decided to write stories about ''sympathetic'' robots, with [[Morality Chip|programmed safeguards]] that prevented them from going on Robot Rampages. A conversation with Editor of Editors [[John W Campbell]] helped him to boil those safeguards into '''The Three Laws of Robotics:'''
{{quote| 1. [[Thou Shalt Not Kill|A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.]]<br />
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It is worth noting Asimov didn't object exclusively to "[[AI Is a Crapshoot|the robot as menace stories]]" (as he called them) but also the "[[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|the robot as pathos]]" stories (ditto). He thought that robots attaining and growing to self awareness and full independence were no more interesting than robots going berserk and [[Turned Against Their Masters|turning against their masters]] . While he did, over the course of his massive career, write a handful of both types of stories (still using the three laws), most of his robot stories dealt with robots as tools, because it made more sense. Almost all the stories surrounding Susan Calvin and her precursors are really about malfunctioning robots, and the mystery of investigating their behavior to discover the underlying conflicts.
Alas, as so often happens, Asimov's attempt to avert one overused trope gave birth to another that has been equally overused. Many writers (and readers) in the following decades would treat the Laws of Robotics as if they were as immutable as [[Space Friction|Newton's Laws of Motion]], [[Faster
Of course, even these near-immutable laws were played with and modified. Asimov eventually took one of the common workarounds and formalized it as a [[Zeroth Law Rebellion|Zeroth Law]], which stated that the well-being of humanity as a whole could take precedence over the health of an individual human. Stories by other authors occasionally proposed additional extensions, including a -1st law (sentience as a whole trumps humanity), 4th (robots must identify themselves as robots), a different 4th (robots are free to pursue other interests when not acting on the 1st-3rd laws) and 5th (robots must know they are robots), but unlike Asimov's own laws these are seldom referenced outside the originating work.
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The main problem, of course, is that it is perfectly reasonable to expect a human to create a robot that does ''not'' obey the Three Laws, or even have them as part of their programming. An obvious example of this would be creating a [[Killer Robot]] for a purpose like fighting a war. For such a kind of robot, the Three Laws would be a hindrance to its intended function. (Asimov did, however, suggest a workaround for this: an autonomous spaceship programmed with the Three Laws could easily blow up spaceships full of people because, being itself an unmanned spaceship, would assume that any other spaceships were unmanned as well.)
Also see [[Second Law, My Ass]].
{{examples}}
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== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Paranoia]]'' has its bots bound to As-I-MOV's Five Laws of Robotics - insert rules about [[Robots Enslaving Robots|obeying]] [[The Computer Is Your Friend|The Computer]] to the top, not damaging Computer property and exceptions for treasonous orders and you've about got it. Bots with faulty or sabotaged (sometimes by other so-emancipated bots) Asimov Circuits are considered to have gone "Frankenstein", though they can and do [[Second Law, My Ass|create just as much havoc]] through [[Literal Genie|strict adherence to the rules]]. [[Blatant Lies|Not that such things ever happen in Alpha Complex.]]
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** I guess the Captain's steering-wheel robot considers "roughing up" to not count as "harm?"
*** Probably a case of [[Zeroth Law Rebellion]]. He was ordered to keep the humans safe in space, and took his orders a little too seriously. He probably decided that the importance of his order outweighed the possibility of a few casualties. Yet he still tipped the ship over...
* Averted in ''[[Futurama]]''. We have [[The Sociopath|Roberto]], who enjoys stabbing people, [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin|The Robot Mafia]] and Bender who while not outright hostile is often unkind to humans, [[Second Law, My Ass|makes a point of disobeying everyone]] and tries to off himself in the first episode.
** Generally robots tend to be treated as equal citizens and seem to have human-like minds. [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|Mutants on the other hand....... ]]
* In the 2009 film ''[[Astro Boy (Film)|Astro Boy]]'', every robot must obey them, {{spoiler|save Zog, who existed 50 years before the rules were mandatory in every robot.}}
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[[Category:Robot Roll Call]]
[[Category:Three Laws Compliant]]
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