Mircea Băduț

Addendum to the Laws of Robotics

Preamble

Listening this morning to the radio – in a short sequence on the topic of robots and artificial intelligence – upon hearing the statement of Asimov’s famous laws, I immediately said to myself: “Those who have to write the methodological rules of application, they really got their work cut out for them!”

Of course, I was once fascinated by the stories that Isaac Asimov embroidered on the “infrastructure” of robotics’ laws, which became not only legendary but also, behold!, a reference for humanity’s concerns regarding the advancement of automation and computer science, and in the disturbing perspective of a potential Singularity[1]. But at the time I did not know that a law is a concise statement, and that – in order to function in social, administrative, economic and judicial practice – it must often be supplemented with detailed provisions on concrete application, so-called ‘implementing regulations’ (a common feature of European Union legislation, and that of its member states, such as my native Romania).

Putting Asimov’s Laws Into Practice