#rtts ai are computer animals with prosthetic bodies

[jayrockin]

Hi Jay! I’ve been reading Asimov and it got me wondering about the Three Laws of Robotics and the RttS universe.

Are there special regulations in place to assure the safety of people interacting with AI? Would there even be a need for that? From my understanding, your AI are basically people, right? How would they feel if someone tried to push for something like Asimov’s Three Laws? Would it feel degrading to them?

Sorry for the many questions, I love your work!

Asimov's on my list of classic scifi authors I'd like to get around to, but unfortunately my familiarity with his robo rules is mostly devoid of its original context and instead built of its collective influence on all the other scifi I've read that steals from him.

My opinion, uh... upon rereading the original laws of robotics penned by Asimov just now for this ask was an immediate, visceral, "Oh! That's slavery!" I don't think these rules could fairly be applied to an entity with personhood, they value the orders of humans above the life of the person they're ordering around. They presume AI as being a tool made to serve humanity, which places them in a servile underclass. With anything sapient enough to potentially resent its position of class inferiority, it prevents revolt by putting a cop in their head instead of social equality. A person with these kind of restrictions would have extremely limited options when it came to resisting abuse from the parties that the laws protect. They are certainly an interesting narrative device and have been thoroughly mined by Asimov and his imitators for their loopholes and failings.

As for my bullshit specifically, these laws do not exist in RttS because they can't, AI code is too complex and poorly understood to add broad cognitive rules. Just like organic sophonts, AI are controlled with (sometimes biased, sometimes unfair, depends on region) external legislation instead. They would probably find the concept of someone putting a cop in their brain just as disturbing as you would.