Law in Contemporary Society

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TheFirstLawOfRobotics 5 - 28 Jun 2012 - Main.MarcLegrand
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 Today I came across a Forbes article based on a brief phone interview with Eben. The focus was on internet security, specifically in the context of mobile technology. As a huge fan of Asimov, I found it particularly interesting because of Eben’s reference to the First Law of Robotics, and how science fiction has generally predicted the interaction between humans and robots.

The First Law of Robotics states that “a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” According to Eben, what our modern day “robots” – our smartphones – do to us on a daily basis is exactly the opposite, and he lists a variety of ways in which this is done.

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 Since interpretation of the law is fact-sensitive and relies on human emotion and experience, I can't see how the laws of robotics could ever be programmed into a robot, or any device for that matter. At least until we build our devices to exhibit judgment and emotion... but that's probably not going to happen for the foreseeable future.

-- HarryKhanna 28 Jun 2012

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>		You're certainly right on one level, but it seems to me that you're pointing out a somewhat illusory problem. Even if we can't program our smartphones to use their judgment to not harm us, we could certainly work on programming communications and networking platforms that don't share our information with anyone who has the money to buy it.

-- MarcLegrand 28 Jun 2012


Revision 5r5 - 28 Jun 2012 - 20:10:24 - MarcLegrand
Revision 4r4 - 28 Jun 2012 - 19:05:31 - HarryKhanna
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