> You can never hold the robot accountable. It's in direct violation of asimov's laws where it's intentionally harming humans.
It's remote controlled by a cop. There's no AI.
It's remote controlled by a cop. There's no AI.
Secondly, the 'laws' were about behaviour that applies mostly to the AI side of things, the fact they are referred to as laws of robotics is mostly immaterial, they are about behaviour rules for AI.
I'm inclined to agree that violating this is generally a bad idea. I don't know that I would go so far as to make it a law, as I am not a pacifist and would prefer a robot to retain the capability to override the first law exclusively in the interest of obeying the second law, when there is an audit trail of commands given such that someone- whether the robot or the human behind the robot- can be held to account.
The robots have video cameras so those recordings can be used to hold the human operator to account.
Naturally, the current implementation is a long, long way from complying with those concepts.
The real question, for today and now, should be: Should we be focusing on implementing more safety measures (getting us closer to the principles behind the laws) or should we deploy what we have in a situation where they can be used for violence?
Are the video feeds from the robots recorded? Are those recordings accessible to the person manipulating the robot, or their direct superiors? Are there backups in case those "get lost"? Are there on-board backups in case of network loss? Some sort of black-box maybe? Can the robot's weapons be deployed if the recording is not in progress?
Even if the robot itself doesn't have an independent will, it can still be equipped with safeguards. Hell, automatic doors almost always have sensors that prevent the door from crushing something if it is in the way of the door closing. Surely we should be more stringent with weaponized robots than we are with garage doors.
Again, consider the garage door example. You push a button, the garage door closes. If something should trigger a safety sensor, the garage door reverses rather than crushing whatever tripped the sensor.
How many times have police been involved in shootings where the body camera was present but not running, or the recording was "lost"? I think it is perfectly reasonable to insist on more safety measures, such as failsafes against the robot firing its weapons if it isn't recording or detects interference in the recording and backup mechanisms.
This is something I hadn't fully considered when I reviewed the three laws; if you go back to my first comment on the thread, I had initially been of mind to dismiss it.