Three Laws needed
Ned Horvath
that an entity with intelligence comparable to that of a human being
cannot be easily held by mere physical restraints. You will NEED to
build in the three laws simply because it won't be practical to physically
restrict (intelligent) robots.
Of course, history has also demonstrated that it is difficult to program
humans with the three laws; they translate quite nicely into what most
governments would accept as a definition of "patriotism."
=Ned=
David Levine
with the recent interest in this net about how SF prophecies are coming true
(someone's query about waldos recently, for one thing) it might be of interest.
It seems that the time when the Three Laws of Robotics are required is fast
approaching... faster, in fact, than the time when we can build machines which
are smart enough to obey them! (This raises intriguing questions about ethics
and technolgy which I don't feel like going into right now.) The alternatives
are to surround the robots with safeguards (which reminds me of the laws
requiring automobiles to be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag) or to
make them smarter. The additional processor power required to interpret and
obey the Three Laws is presently more expensive than mechanical safeguards
(e.g. a fence around the robot) and so we won't be seeing moral robots for some
time, if ever. A thought to think about: at what point does the phenomenal
expense of intelligent robots outweigh the cost in lives and injury incurred by
dumb ones? (This, of course, assumes that robots smart enough to distinguish a
"human being" from a trash can, never mind avoid harming one, are technically
possible.) Given normal business ethics, is there any situation in which the
Three Laws would be preferable (i.e. cheaper in the long run) than mechanical
safeguards?
----------------------------------------
The following article appeared in The (Portland) Oregonian, Aug. 11, 1983,
p. A18. Reprinted without permission.
ROBOT FIRM LIABLE IN DEATH
By Tim Kiska, Knight-Ridder News Service
DETROIT -- The manufacturer of a one-ton robot that killed a
worker at Ford Motor Co.'s Flat Rock casting plant must pay the
man's family $10 million, a Wayne County Circuit jury ruled
Tuesday.
The jury of three men and three women deliberated for 2 1/2
hours before announcing the decision against Unit Handling
Systems in a suit by the family of Robert Williams, who was
killed Jan. 25, 1979. Unit Handling is a division of Litton
Industries.
It is believed to be the largest personal injury award in
state history. The case was tried before Judge Charles Kaufman.
At the time of his death, Williams, 25, of Dearborn Heights,
Mich., was one of three men who operated an electronic parts-
retrieval system at Ford's Flat Rock plant. The plant has since
been closed.
The system, made by Unit Handling, was designed to have a
robot autoamatically recover parts from a storage area at the
plant.
On the day of his death, Williams was asked to climb into a
storage rack to retreive parts because the robot was
malfunctioning at the time and not operating fast enough,
according to the Williams family's attorneys.
The robot, meanwhile, continued to work silently, and a
protruding segment of its arm smashed into Williams' head,
killing him instantly.
The robot kept operating while Williams lay deadfor about 30
minutes. His body was discovered by workers who became concerned
because he was missing.
Attorneys for the family said the robot should have been
equipped with devices to warn workers that it was operating.
"If they didn't want people up there when the robot was
moving around, they should have installed safety devices," said
Joan Lovell, one of the two attorneys representing the family.
"Human beings are more important than production."
The jury's award went to Williams' widow, Sandra, their
three children, ages 8, 6, and 5, his mother, and five sisters.
The 6-year-old was celebrating his second birthday on the
day of his father's death.
"They were an extremely close family," said Lovell. "I've
seen a lot of people who have been injured, but this family was
particularly devastated by this loss."
-- end of article --
-- David D. Levine (...decvax!tektronix!tekecs!davidl) [UUCP]
(...tekecs!davidl.tektronix@rand-relay) [ARPA]