Three Laws of Robotics

Today afternoon, I went out to Mangga Dua to buy some DVD titles. Actually, I just wanted to buy “Spiderman 2”. But after browsing the store, I brought “Fahrenheit 9/11”, “Finding Nemo”, “I, Robot” and my number one favorite Hollywood movies: “Star Wars” Trilogy along with my long-waited DVD, “Spiderman 2” to the cashier ;)

Back home, unfortunately, when I inserted the "I, Robot" disc into my console, an error message something like “TV system doesn’t match” appeared on my TV screen. It seems that "I, Robot" DVD ain’t compatible with my PS2 machine which is NTSC.

To lessen my disappointment and my curiosity about its story, I googled the internet using “Isaac Asimov” as keywords. This guy is a US-Russian-born author, science fiction novelist, and scholar who wrote short story collection called “I, Robot” in 1950. And in my Google search result, there was an interesting finding. It’s called the Three Laws of Robotics.

When computers evolve into high intelligent robots, it becomes important to protect humans from unintentional harm from these mechanical beings. In 1942, through the story called “Runaround”, Isaac Asimov addressed that problem by stating the “Three Laws of Robotics”. The three laws are: 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 orders given to 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 Law.

Well, through movies, books, scientific papers, weblogs, etc., many have shared their thought about the existence of human-creation-mechanical-beings equipped with a marvelous-advance-analytical-data-processing capability, so called AI (Artificial Intelligent). Many pros and cons arise around this issue ‘till this day. Generally, use of robot(s) is to help mankind in doing tasks that either are too dirty, dangerous, difficult, repetitive or dull for most humans, such as working in a nuclear reactor, deep earth mining, assembling vehicles, planetary exploration, and so on. The negative aspects could be the second industrial revolution (even baby sitting can be done by a robot), human laziness and even decreasing human social life and interaction. Maybe someday, hotel will use robot as a receptionist, hyper store will use robots as shopkeepers and sellers, many companies will use robots as their customer service personnel, many families will choose Aibo-liked-toy as their pet instead of a real one, and even guys from showbiz will use an artificial singer like Macross Plus’s Sharon Apple.

But IMHO, “Hey human being, worry not!”, “As long as thou do not intend to harm others, insya allah, so thy creation will not intend to harm thou as well.” ;)
Well, sometimes, I wonder if someday, the relationship between human and robot will come like in the long science fiction anime and manga by Ozamu Tezuka, “Astro Boy” :-?