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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

It would be awesome if Amazon could force registrants to contractually agree to follow Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics.

For certain definitions of 'awesome'; we'd be inviting murder and deception and all manner of crime via robot. I think the lesson from Asimov is that we can't bank on a simple set of laws to protect us from killer robots.

The zeroth law is most important, as well. If we try this route we'd have to be sure to implement that law first.

> A robot may not harm humanity; or through inaction allow humanity to come to harm.

the problem being definining what "harming humanity" means.

Do botnets qualify as "robots" and does "harming humanity" include DDoS attacks?

That would be good in theory but might not be so good, interesting thoughts on the subject from Computerphile - Why Asimov's Laws of Robotics Don't Work - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PKx3kS7f4A

Wasn't that the entire, combined plot for the book I Robot?

That the three rules don't always work?

It's the combined plot for pretty much every Asimov book they appear in. That's discussed in the linked video, as well as the grand picture of why they don't really make sense as "laws" since they're basically impossible to define without first defining all of ethics.

Obligatory comic https://xkcd.com/1613

    That's fiction, Foster. Some guy made it up!

A cruise missile is a robot.

They certainly could ... I agree they should.

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