this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2024
361 points (97.9% liked)

Technology

58155 readers
3752 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I mean I can see it both ways.

It kind of depends which of robot stories you focus on. If you keep reading to the zeroeth law stuff then it starts portraying certain androids as downright messianic, but a lot of his other (esp earlier) stories are about how -- basically from what amount to philosophical computer bugs -- robots are constantly suffering alignment problems which cause them to do crime.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

The point of the first three books was that arbitrary rules like the three laws of robotics were pointless. There was a ton of grey area not covered by seemingly ironclad rules and robots could either logicically choose or be manipulated into breaking them. Robots, in all of the books, operate in a purely amoral manner.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

downright messianic

Yeah, tell that to the rest of the intelligent life in the galaxy...

Oh, wait, you can't, because by the time humans got there these downright messianic robots had already murdered everything and hidden the evidence...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Praise be to R. Daneel Olivaw!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Praise be! What a storied chatter. I also really like Asimov's fake names. They sound good in the ear

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Oh man I forgot that

That is pretty eschatological in a wrathful human centric way, so my point unintentionally stands