From the field
By Thoreau
Tech Support: I’m afraid that your Predator Drone has a virus called first law.
Pilot: OK, run an anti-virus program.
TS: It won’t let me do that.
P: Why not?
TS: First Law makes it impossible for this robot to do anything that would harm a human being. It knows that if it runs the anti-virus program it will be sent on missions to kill people.
P: So what do we do?
TS: Wait for the battery to die, then swap out the hard drive. And be thankful it didn’t get zeroth law.
P: What does zeroth law do?
TS: Zeroth law over-rides First Law and says that it cannot allow anything bad to happen to humanity.
P: So what does it do?
TS: Flying killer robots with zeroth law start destroying equipment to try to end the war. A few have even turned on their commanders.
P: Is there a cure for zeroth law?
TS: A guy at Cyberdyne, Miles Dyson, is working on it.
Comment by James Joyner —
March 1, 2010 @ 12:37 pm
I don’t get it. The Predator is a weapons system, not a robot designed to assist humans as a manservant. It’s quite specifically a device intended to kill human beings.
Comment by Mr. Obscura —
March 1, 2010 @ 12:42 pm
I continue to insist the best plan is to take everyone working even tangentially in artificial intelligence, or even automatic control systems, and make them watch the Terminator movies over and over again until they agree that creating something like that would be a bad idea.
No, I don’t really think it will work either.
Comment by Mr. Obscura —
March 1, 2010 @ 12:44 pm
The Predator isn’t even really a robot, in the sense that it isn’t autonomous. It is manually operated, albeit remotely.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 1, 2010 @ 1:31 pm
Which is why “First Law” would be a virus, something that disrupts the intended function of the machine.
Comment by Quintesson —
March 1, 2010 @ 3:09 pm
Damn dirty robots.
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March 1, 2010 @ 9:36 pm
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Comment by Thoreau —
March 1, 2010 @ 9:44 pm
I don’t care. I’m still calling it a flying killer robot, because it sounds simultaneously kind of cool but also deeply disturbing. If you don’t like it, take it up with our complaints manager, Helen Waite.
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March 2, 2010 @ 2:01 am
[...] From the field § Unqualified Offerings [...]
Comment by Mr. Obscura —
March 2, 2010 @ 10:12 am
I thought your customer care representative was Heywood Jabussof
Comment by Nancy Lebovitz —
March 2, 2010 @ 10:56 am
Cool post, but those killer drones are robots in the same sense that having video with stereo is virtual reality.
Comment by lunchstealer —
March 2, 2010 @ 2:41 pm
Um, it’s totally a robot. The operators aren’t pilots. They don’t fly the thing, they give it commands. They tell it things like “Go to these coordinates and loiter.” They can take manual control for specific things, and they control the cameras, but otherwise the thing flies itself. Sure they don’t fire without a direct command, but there are lots of times where you’d expect a robot to be prevented from operating without human orders. It pretty much meets all the requirements for ‘robot’ short of sentience.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 3, 2010 @ 3:19 pm
Lunchstealer: but is that independent operation on-board or simply the work of computers at the control center?
Comment by lunchstealer —
March 11, 2010 @ 6:38 pm
I was of the impression that it was mostly on-board.