Timeline for Did the robot that saved Spooner's life in I, Robot break the 2nd law of robotics?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
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| Jul 12, 2017 at 15:09 | comment | added | Flater | @Luaan: But VIKI's methods show that she stopped caring about harming individuals (notice that the laws speak of harm, not death) if they do not meaningfully contribute to humanity. If she was still applying the same law, she would still have been an "overbearing mother" AI (e.g. no salt, no dangerous sports, ... nothing that could harm you slightly), but she would not have tried to kill or harm Will Smith, nor any of the other humans that stood up against the robots. And she did. Which proves that she stopped applying the original First Law, and supplanted it with her own version. | |
| Jul 12, 2017 at 15:03 | comment | added | Luaan | @Flater Well, not if you take it consistently with the original robot incident - the robot clearly has shown to choose preferentially the one who has the highest chance of survival. VIKI did basically the same thing, only instead of considering "two cars sinking in the river right now", she considered "all humans in all of the US". If 100 people die with 10% probability, it's preferable to a different scenario where 10000 people die with 90% probability. I'm not saying this is compatible with Asimov's robots, of course - there the derivation of the zeroth law is truly original. | |
| Jul 12, 2017 at 14:49 | comment | added | Flater | @Luaan: I don't think VIKI took the First Law to its conclusion, but rather swapped the original "no harm comes to humans" (as it was intended) with "no harm comes to humanity" (which considers humans as the ants that sacrifice themselves for the good of the colony). To VIKI's mind, humanity and humans are interchangable (hence why she did what she did), and she does not understand the sanctity of individual human life. By redefining both "human" and "harm" (she took it more figurative, while the laws focused on physical harm), she redefined the laws without technically breaking them. | |
| Jul 12, 2017 at 13:42 | comment | added | Luaan | It also seems that the calculations are rather local - we're not exactly seeing robots spontaneously running off to Africa to save starving kids (far more "lives saved per effort") until VIKI comes around. In fact, VIKI isn't really interpreting some new zeroth law, she just takes the first to its logical conclusion given the information she has available (unlike in the actual Asimov novels which are a lot more nuanced). Also note that Asimovian robots can often break the laws, they just don't survive it intact - so it's possible the robot saved Will and then utterly broke down. | |
| Jul 12, 2017 at 13:37 | comment | added | F1Krazy | The percentages are actually stated in the movie: Spooner had a 45% chance of survival, Sarah (the girl) had an 11% chance. | |
| Jul 12, 2017 at 13:34 | comment | added | Darren | An interesting explanation. +1 | |
| Jul 12, 2017 at 13:32 | history | answered | monoRed | CC BY-SA 3.0 |