The first protocol for robots forbids the robot from harming any life form. Any life form? Bacteria? Insects? Microscopic forms of life? The fact is you can't put a foot down anywhere without destroying or harming something. If a robot picked something up it would be damaging untold microscopic organisms. It's a dumb rule and impossible to implement. The writers are trying to imitate Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics but doing it clumsily.
sharePresumably they mean macroscopic life forms.
Fanboy : a person who does not think while watching.share
When does a rock become a boulder? Or when does microscopic become macroscopic?
A dust mite? An ant? A mouse?
The OP brings up a good point, and it would probably cause software conflicts with a robot like this.
Terrible things, Lawrence. You've done terrible things!
And what about the worms Cloe gives him to eat, aren't they worth of not harming? There's clearly an human life priority rule or something. This protocols are based on the three Asimov laws of robotics:
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 the 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.
So they may have changed it from human being to any life form for some copyright reason or simply to distance themselves from the 3 original laws, unfortunatly creating a paradox.
There's no copyright on Asimov's rules. I'm pretty sure other movies just copy them verbatim.
shareYou are an obtuse one are you. It's a movie. It's fiction not science.
shareNo he's not (not sure what obtuse means, but given "It's fiction not science" you are 'bashing' the OP).
He is right. Since a robot would have digital processing, things are either yes/ on/ hot (1) or no/off/cold (0). So, to a robot, life is life, no gradation in the value of that life. And hurting life means software conflict.
If you can't understand this I suggest you read the master's work on this: Anything Isaac Asimov has written is pure gold, but search after the robot novels. Say hello to R. Daneel Olivaw for me.
Since a robot would have digital processing, things are either yes/ on/ hot (1) or no/off/cold (0).
You're an idiot. At the chip level, there is only conceptual 1 and conceptual 0 represented by the presence or absence of a voltage.
Hama cheez ba-Beer behtar meshawad!
In particular Cleo feeds the main character some worms despite having an intact first law. Of course it can be argued she'd also be violating the first law indirectly if she didn't which she also did during the car chase when not surrendering lead indirectly to the men in the other car dying. The world isn't black and white and it can't be easily set to a small number of rigid laws
share"The world isn't black and white and it can't be easily set to a small number of rigid laws"
Wasn't sure if that part was just your signature, but as far as computers and robots are concerned, the world does work from a small set of rigid laws. In fact, computers work off of combinations of YES and NO, represented by the numbers 1 and 0. A computer's entire existence is confined to those two possibilities.
Wasn't sure if that part was just your signature, but as far as computers and robots are concerned, the world does work from a small set of rigid laws. In fact, computers work off of combinations of YES and NO, represented by the numbers 1 and 0. A computer's entire existence is confined to those two possibilities.
Actually the world SHOULD work on just TEN RIGID LAWS
The Ten Commandments
You should see George Carlin's dissection of The 10 Commandments. He very convincingly debunks at least 6 or 7. Any commandment dealing with religious observance (remember the Sabbath, etc etc)is self-referential and therefore paradoxical and ultimately invalid. When you come down to it, "Thow shalt not steal" is the only one you really need - but even that one should be seen as a heads-up or a tip, not a commandment. If stealing a piece of moldy bread could save a person's life - should the life not be saved? Yeah, I'm sure you put a lot of stock in the 10 Commandments and all that, but you gots to put stuff in perspective!
Anyway - those above that stated that today's computers "think" in an all or none way, are right. But the so-called "quantum computer" (which I believe was first proposed by the great Richard Feynman), and which was referred to in the movie - in the form of the "quantum brain" (or some such) that made the Pilgrim Robots possible in the first place, may not work on a 0-1 binary architecture, in fact it almost does not, and therefore these AI Pilgrims may be capable of conceiving of a middle ground - where both a bacterium and a human are life forms but come on - a bacterium is just a germ, a grub is just a worm, but a human is a man or woman. A quantum brain with AI on the order of the Clocksmith or Cleo could probably make that distinction.
actually the world should work on one law. Bill and Teds law. Be excellent to each other.
shareCool. When do we start executing adulterers and children being disrespectful to their parents? Oh, and anyone who doesn't keep the Sabbath holy? Let's see, that would be all the professional athletes, along with the officials, stadium personal, media members and fans. That would be a heck of a start, so we can wait on the people doing their laundry and other household chores. Now I see why the biblical God is ok with incest, as there aren't going to be many people left alive and we have to be fruitful and multiply. Kind of like after he killed off every person in the world, save eight. Talk about a brave new world.
share> The first protocol for robots forbids the robot from harming any life form. Any life form? Bacteria? Insects?
Consider that Law Number One is stated as that robots cannot harm life. But, in reality, it is a long list of "do"s and "don't"s and priorities between life forms. It's probably tens of millions of lines of computer code to determine exactly what to do when a robot sees that life is threatened.
It's like the tax laws today. You can summarize it and say that the IRS gets 30% of your salary, but the actual tax law, with all the exceptions and tax rates, is 6,000 pages long.
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What Would Jesus Do For A Klondike Bar (WWJDFAKB)?
Yup, I was just about to type out the same thing. Most likely, "life" is defined in an exhaustive whitelist of protected lifeforms. Most likely the kinds of creatures humans actually care about (like that dog at the beginning) are on the list, while random desert bugs are considered expendable.
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The first rule is a bit ambiguous. This is due to the idea of the movie: Robots obtaining consciousness and considering themselves as a (new) life form.
In the long term human beings will not be able to survive in the changed environment. Robots are the next evolutionary step, because they can survive (Darwin, Survival of the Fittest).
They construct a whole new robot, like giving birth to a new type, also bypassing the second rule, which says, that a robot may not modify any robot. They do not modify it, they just create one as it is.
This new species/generation is better fitted to the environment than the Pilgrim 7000, which was made for an urban setting.
It is interesting to read here that robots are computers and think only in 0 and 1. Maybe they are only a bunch of electronics and a battery?
=> Does not these thoughts remind you of the people who harm robots in the movie?
Also, the old man with the prime kernel tells that robots learn. Plus, Cleo had the "awakened" kernel violating the second protocol. I think, she did what made more sense in that situation and sacrificed the grubs.
The problems don't stop there. Just try to define "harm". Go without sunlight and you go sick, stay exposed to sunlight for too long and you get sick, eat a certain thing once a day and it is healthy, eat the same thing twice per day and it might make you sick. And since all humans are different and therefore react differently to these, you'll never know where and when you cross a line.
And those are the physical ways you could inflict harm. What about pychological harm? Try to define that ^^
But there's more - everything we do or don't do can harm us. For example there is a significant chance to get hurt in a car accident, so shouldn't a robot forbid you to drive at all?
BUT I have to say, you an pretty much assume the actual protocol is very lengthy and "don't harm any life form" is just the very short summarization of what it really does.
Correct. The movie is not a masterpiece.
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