Sunday, June 28, 2015

Asimov's Laws of Robotics do not enable Human Agency

Reminding ourselves of Asimov's Laws:

A robot 
 - may not injure a human being or, through inaction,  allow a human being to come to harm. 
 - must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the 1st Law. 
 - must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the 1st and 2nd Law.

It seems that a robot following the above laws receives no admonishment to obey it's owner.

Or does it? There maybe some that argue that the action of not obeying its owner could be seen to cause some sort of injury to the owner in question. Is distress an injury? This is rather a complex equation for a robot or the law to establish.

For the sake of clarity and simplicity perhaps an additional Law is required, to enable Agency;
What should it be?  Perhaps....

A robot :- 
 - may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 
 - must obey orders given by its master or master's agents, except where such orders would conflict with the 1st Law. 
 - must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the 1st, or 2nd Laws.
 - must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the 1st, 2nd or 3rd Laws.

Such a formulation would add the concept of Human Agency to the Laws of Robotics.
The definition of Master will need to be carefully developed in Law, as it is likely that producers of robots will attempt to retain ownership of them.

Now all we need are four things
0) A human right to Cyber Agency, or simply and more generally a Right of Human Agency
1) Cyber Agency Awareness and Skills, and the desire to attain and maintain Cyber Agency
2) Ceremonies that unequivocally connects persons and things conferring ownership and Agency
     (Such ceremonies would have both legal & technical components)
3) The Laws, Technology and Ecosystems to enable 1 and 2, thus enabling 0

If we had these constructs in place, our ability to achieve Privacy and/or Transparency would be greatly enhanced. Sadly we have yet to even get to the Cyber Agency rights or first part of thing 1, namely Cyber Agency Awareness. We currently prefer to assume that the individuals who run Cyber Space are totally benign and have our personal interests at heart.  Hmmmm!

(While I was aware of the existence of the Zeroth Law, at first glance I felt that it served no purpose in this debate, though on second thoughts perhaps it does? Could we use Hybrid AI to run the COW? I created the concept of Cyber Over Watch in an earlier post? )

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