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Rossum's Universal Robots (wikipedia.org)
59 points by rfreytag on March 3, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 18 comments



This is kinda required reading!

Also, while it's really talking about stuff going on at its own time, War with the Newts is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_with_the_Newts


Well, since we are talking about Karel Čapek, what about his book "The White disease", where a ruthless dictator of a big well armed country is preparing the attack on a small country during the pandemic of a new disease? A really good movie (in my opinion) based on that book is for free on YouTube (if you are not deterred by black and white movie with subtitles): https://youtu.be/HJMUIBEzYnI


In War with the newts during summer, the news reporters are complains that nothing is happening, there's nothing to write about, and then one of the news reporter suggest that some scientist should at least discover new vitamin so that they have something to write about. Written on 1936 but just as relevant today (I mean the entertaining role newspapers expects from the typical scientists).


Unfortunately it’s extremely relevant again, given the current European affairs :(


The thing I love about this is that the entire trope about a robot uprising comes from this play about workers (translation of the Czech "robota") being mistreated and overthrowing their oppressors.


I believe it's an etymological cousin of the German 'arbeit'


It translates closer to “slave” or “serf.”


From the wikipedia : "The play introduced the word robot, which displaced older words such as "automaton" or "android" in languages around the world.", " In Czech, robota means forced labour of the kind that serfs had to perform on their masters' lands and is derived from rab, meaning "slave"."


For a send-up of nuclear power, see also Kapec’s “The Absolute at Large”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Absolute_at_Large

in which it turns out that you really can achieve 100% mass/energy controlled conversion, but, what is left over is the little spark of the Divine in all things…


I had a thought while reading a tangential article about AI.

Perhaps Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics might need a fourth one adding - #) Any AI must honestly identify themselves as such if asked.

Although quite where that should slot in (eg Above rule 1 or as the final one?) makes for an interesting thought experiment on edge cases.

What if identifying as an AI would harm that human? If so then it should be at the end of the rules.

However, given the "This is why we can't have nice things" factor of human nature or the “What if a sufficiently developed AI decided that self-protection by denial was the best thing to do in a certain situation?” type of scenarios then perhaps as rule #1?


The "three laws" were laws for fiction about robots, not for robots. No robot will ever be built with any "law" embedded more abstract than "do what the program directs".


I feel like a lot of early robot stories involved them being a hidden threat, golems that would rise up against their masters.

I read somewhere once that Isaac Asimov was a pioneer in writing stories about benevolent robots. His robots were neurologically incapable of harming humans (except for a few who could convince themselves to do so to help humanity as a whole).


That was Asimov's deal with Campbell: he could write robot stories, but for any of it to be publishable his robots had to obey Campbell and not be able to rebel. Actually spelling laws out in the text was his way of needling Campbell. Having the robots end up confining humans to Earth and exterminating all aliens was his triumph over Campbell.

The whole Fred Saberhagen "Berserker" series can be thought of as the other side of that action, with Asimov's robots in the role of the berserkers.

No actual robot will ever be constrained by any such "law".


> Having the robots end up confining humans to Earth

Which storyline is that? I remember the opposite, when R. Giskard intentionally renders the Earth uninhabitable to push humanity out to the stars.


All I remember is a title, something like "All the Spaceships Rusting". Giskard must have been after Campbell died? I gather Foundation was retconned into the robotverse at some point.


Please read his books.


I've read a lot of them. The part I was unsure about was his being the first depiction of benevolent robots.


Can I officially request that Boston Dynamics put on this play with a bunch of Atlases?




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