• then_three_more@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    It would technically be the fifth law.

    Zeroth Law - A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          It’s even better because

          Tap for spoiler

          A robot created the zeroth law to allow the killing of people to save humanity

            • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Was there a movie? Mind you it’s been like 15 years since I read robots and empire but

              Tap for spoiler

              Allowing the earth to be radiation poisoned would kill people but force the humans off earth

              Like I’d love some good robots movies. Robots of Dawn would likely struggle with reception, and honestly so would Under the Naked Sun but Caves of Steel? Less so.

                • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  Why would anyone put will smith in this movie, or call it I, Robot, much less I have to assume they combined robots and empire with caves of steel and that’s a shit decision as well‽

                  • HessiaNerd@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    They actually took a bunch of elements of the short story collection and jammed them together. The worst is what they did to Susan Calvin…

                    Ignoring the butchery, it’s a pretty generic action movie. Very forgettable. Adding what they did to the source material makes it a straight tragedy.

        • YAMAPIKARIYA@lemmyfi.com
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          5 months ago

          The sentence says “…or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.” If they are dead due to the robots action it is technically within the rules.

          • samus12345@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Oh, I see, you’re saying they can bypass “injure” and go straight to “kill”. Killing someone still qualifies as injuring them - ever heard the term “fatally injured”? So no, it wouldn’t be within the rules.

            • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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              5 months ago

              I think he’s referring to the absolutism of the programmatic “or” statement.

              The robot would interpret (cannot cause harm to humanity) or (through inaction allow harm to come to humanity). If either statement is true, then the rule is satisfied.

              By taking action in harming humans to death, the robot made true the second statement satisfying the rule as “followed”.

              While our meat brains can work out the meaning of the phrase, the computer would take it very literally and therefore, death to all humans!

              Furthermore, if a human comes to harm, they may have violated the second half of the first rule, but since the robot didn’t cause harm to the person, the first statement is true, therefore, death to all humans!

              • samus12345@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                That works if you ignore the commas after “or” and “through inaction”, which does sound like a robot thing to do. Damn synths!

                  • samus12345@lemmy.world
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                    5 months ago

                    “Nor” would be more grammatically correct and clearer in meaning, too, since they’re actually telling robots what not to do.

      • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        The concept of death may be hard to explain because robots don’t need to run 24\7 in order to keep functioning. Until instructed otherwise,a machine would think a person with a cardiac arrest is safe to boot later.

        • NABDad@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Who can say that death is the injury? It could be that continued suffering would be an injury worse than death. Life is suffering. Death ends life. Therefore, death ends suffering and stops injury.

      • Mithre@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Actually no! Lower numbered laws have priority over higher numbers, meaning that if they come into conflict the higher number law can be broken. While the first law says they can’t allow humans to come to harm, the zeroth law basically says that if it’s for the good of the species, they absolutely can kill or otherwise hurt individual humans.