Zeroth Law of Robotics (2024)

FAQs

Are Asimov's laws scientifically plausible? ›

Asimov's laws of robotics are not scientific laws, they are instructions built in to every robot in his stories to prevent them malfunctioning in a way that could be dangerous. The first law is that a robot shall not harm a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to harm.

Zeroth Law

A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

The flaw with the laws is this: They assume that morality and moral decisions can be made by means of an algorithm, that discrete yes/no answers suffice to “solve” moral quandaries. They are not sufficient.

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey 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 Law.

However, theories and laws can be disproven when new evidence emerges. Certain accepted truths of Newtonian physics were partially disproven by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. The work of Louis Pasteur disproved prior theories of disease in animals.

Asimov correctly predicted that over-population and pollution would increase, although he hoped - rather optimistically - that "by 2019 advances in technology will place in our hands the tools that will help accelerate the process whereby the deterioration of the environment will be reversed".

The Zeroth Law of thermodynamics states that there is an energy form called heat, which has the tendency to spread through a system, and a variable called temperature that measures this tendency: heat flows from the regions of high temperature to the regions of low temperature only.

In later fiction where robots had taken responsibility for government of whole planets and human civilizations, Asimov also added a fourth, or zeroth law, to precede the others: 0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."

This sixth law states: "All robots endowed with comparable human reason and conscience should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

Moravec's paradox is the observation in artificial intelligence and robotics that, contrary to traditional assumptions, reasoning requires very little computation, but sensorimotor and perception skills require enormous computational resources.

Why can't robots be moral agents? ›

Robots ultimately lack the intentionality and free will necessary for moral agency, because they can only make morally charged decisions and actions as a result of what they were programmed to do.

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When science fiction author Isaac Asimov devised his Three Laws of Robotics he was thinking about androids. He envisioned a world where these human-like robots would act like servants and would need a set of programming rules to prevent them from causing harm.

The 3Rs of robotic piece-picking - range, rate, and reliability - key metrics.

three laws of robotics, rules developed by science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who sought to create an ethical system for humans and robots.

What are the three conditions that stop a robot? A program/driven action is finished, an alarm condition, mechanical failure.

Isaac Newton's 1687 description of gravity was considered scientific law until Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, published more than two centuries later. Newton had explained gravity as a force that instantaneously acts over a distance. The result is a pull between any two objects in the universe.

Laws of physics cannot be "broken" per se, and there are no real consequences for doing so. Demonstrating a physical law invalid would necessitate investigation into the phenomenon, and if the "breaking" of the law is shown to be reproducible, new physics will be discovered to further our understanding of the world.

Hence, evolution is both a theory and a set of established facts that the theory explains. Like every other science, there is scientific debate about some aspects of evolution, but none of these debates appear likely to shake the foundations of this field.

Without a doubt, the smartest AI is Isaac Asimov's Multi-Vac. In his short story, The Last Question Multi-Vac is asked this question repeatedly throughout history and evolving with the human race.

Wearable computers and devices would be developed. Personal computers and devices would have no moving parts, and electronic memories. Users would store their information, music and movies on their computers and devices. Digital music and books would largely replace physical media.

What did Futurist Ray Kurzweil predict? ›

The renowned futurist predicts that AI will surpass human intelligence and pass the Turing test by 2029. And that by 2045, humans will merge with the artificial intelligence we've created, a phenomenon he calls 'The Singularity.

The most common application of the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics is the thermometer. Using a simple thermometer containing mercury in a tube, we may watch the Zeroth law in operation. The mercury expands as the temperature rises because the tube's area remains constant.

The zeroth law is important for the mathematical formulation of thermodynamics. Mathematically, it makes the relation of thermal equilibrium between systems an equivalence relation, which can represent equality of some quantity associated with each system.

Ismail al-Jazari, the Muslim inventor whom some call the 'Father of Robotics'

The first problem is that the laws are fiction! They are a plot device that Asimov made up to help drive his stories. Even more, his tales almost always revolved around how robots might follow these great sounding, logical ethical codes, but still go astray and the unintended consequences that result.

Robot is a relative newcomer to the English language. It was the brainchild of the Czech playwright, novelist and journalist Karel Čapek, who introduced it in his 1920 hit play, R.U.R., or Rossum's Universal Robots. Science historian Howard Markel discusses how Čapek thought up the word.

The Zeroth Law of Robotics , the most important Law for Giskardian robots, was phrased multiple ways: 'A robot may not harm humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. '

JOSEPH ENGELBERGER // The Father of Robotics. Joseph F. Engelberger, an American physicist, engineer, and businessman, was responsible for the birth of one the most important and impactful industries, gaining him global recognition as the Father of Robotics.

Robot ethics

And arguments are mostly originated in the question of whether robots have rights like humans and animals do.

What did Elon Musk say about robots? ›

Elon Musk expects humanoid robots to outnumber humans. Elon Musk is all about robots. He has likened his self-driving Tesla cars to “robots on wheels.” As for the robots on legs, he has grand plans for eventually selling a humanoid robot named Optimus.

The heritability of intelligence is extremely high, but it can also be malleable, a paradox that has been the source of continuous controversy.

The Human Paradox aims to counter or correct several contemporary assumptions about the nature of the human, especially the tendency of Western culture, since the seventeenth century, to identify the human with rationality and the rational mind.

Another argument in favor of giving rights to robots is that they deserve it. AI-enabled robots have the potential for greatly increasing human productivity, either by replacing human effort or supplementing it. Robots can work in places and perform more dangerous tasks than humans can or want to do.

The AI can outsmart humans, finding solutions that fulfill a brief but in ways that misalign with the creator's intent. On a simulator, that doesn't matter. But in the real world, the outcomes could be a lot more insidious. Here are five more stories showing the creative ingenuity of AI.

Robot ethics, sometimes known as "roboethics", concerns ethical problems that occur with robots, such as whether robots pose a threat to humans in the long or short run, whether some uses of robots are problematic (such as in healthcare or as 'killer robots' in war), and how robots should be designed such that they act ...

In 1965 I. J. Good predicted an ultraintelligent machine by 2000, Vinge (1993) predicted greater-than-human intelligence between 2005 and 2030, Yudkowsky (1996) predicted a singularity by 2021, and Kurzweil (2005) predicted human-level artificial intelligence by 2030.

They can be found in factories and other industrial settings, performing dangerous or difficult tasks for humans to do. But robots are also starting to appear in more mundane environments, such as homes and hospitals.

As noted in "The Fifth Law of Robotics" by Nikola Kesarovski, "A robot must know it is a robot": it is presumed that a robot has a definition of the term or a means to apply it to its own actions.

The earliest robots as we know them were created in the early 1950s by George C. Devol, an inventor from Louisville, Kentucky. He invented and patented a reprogrammable manipulator called "Unimate," from "Universal Automation." For the next decade, he attempted to sell his product in the industry, but did not succeed.

What are Callahan's 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 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 Law.

Under product liability law, manufacturers are liable when their “thinking” machines cause harm — even if the company has the best of intentions and the harm is unforeseen. In other situations, robot makers are only liable when they are negligent.

A simple and effective solution to avoid some singularities is to impose joint limits in your robot programming. This prevents the joints in question from moving beyond certain angles, which would lead to the robot entering a singularity. While this method is simple and effective, it restricts the robot's motion.

A scientific law is a statement that summarizes a collection of observations or results from experiments. Scientific laws are always true under the same conditions and therefore can be used to make predictions.

The first problem is that the laws are fiction! They are a plot device that Asimov made up to help drive his stories. Even more, his tales almost always revolved around how robots might follow these great sounding, logical ethical codes, but still go astray and the unintended consequences that result.

Scientific laws are similar to scientific theories in that they are principles that can be used to predict the behavior of the natural world. Both scientific laws and scientific theories are typically well-supported by observations and/or experimental evidence.

As with other kinds of scientific knowledge, scientific laws do not express absolute certainty, as mathematical theorems or identities do. A scientific law may be contradicted, restricted, or extended by future observations.

Isaac Newton's 1687 description of gravity was considered scientific law until Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, published more than two centuries later. Newton had explained gravity as a force that instantaneously acts over a distance. The result is a pull between any two objects in the universe.

Are scientific laws impossible to falsify? ›

One of the tenets behind the scientific method is that any scientific hypothesis and resultant experimental design must be inherently falsifiable. Although falsifiability is not universally accepted, it is still the foundation of the majority of scientific experiments.

Evolution is both a fact and a theory. Evolution is widely observable in laboratory and natural populations as they change over time. The fact that we need annual flu vaccines is one example of observable evolution.

The rules can be applied to all types of research fields. Regardless of what types of fields (engineering, science, medicine to social science) people work on, there are general rules, to follow, for scientific articles. The five rules are logical, clear, accurate, concise and audience-dependence.