Caliban

“I say to you, my friends, that we are close to being completely dependent upon our servants, and our servants suffer grave debasement at our hands. We are doomed if we cede everything but creativity to our robots, and we are in the process of abandoning creativity in ourselves. Robots, meanwhile, are doomed if they look solely to us for a reason to exist even as we as a people dry up and blow away.”

Again, silence in the room. This was the moment. This was the point, the place where she had to tread the lightest.

“In order to stop our accelerating drift into stagnation, we must fundamentally alter our relationship with our robots. We must take up our own work again, get our hands dirty, reengage ourselves with the real world, lest our skills and spirit atrophy further.

“At the same time, we must begin to make better use of these magnificent thinking machines we have made. We have a world in crisis, a planet on the point of collapse. There is much work to do, for as many willing hands as we can find. Real work that goes begging while our robots hold our toothbrushes. If we want to get the maximum utility out of our robots, we must allow, even insist, that they reach their maximum potential as problem-solvers. We must raise them up from their positions as slaves to coworkers, so they lighten our burdens but do not relieve us of all that makes us human.

“In order to do this we must revise the Laws of Robotics.” There. The words were spoken. There was stunned silence, and then shouts of protest, cries in the dark, howls of anger and fear. There was no riding out this outburst. Fredda gripped the side of the lectern and spoke in her loudest, firmest voice.

“The Three Laws have done splendid service,” she said, judging it was time to say something the crowd would like to hear. “They have done great things. They have been a mighty tool in the hands of Spacer civilization. But no tool is right in all times for all purposes.”

Still the shouts, still the cries.

“It is time,” Fredda said, “to build a better robot.”

The hall fell silent again.There. That got their attention. More and Better Robots-that was the Ironhead motto, after all. She hurried on. “Back in the dimmest recesses of history, back in the age when robots were invented, there were two fastening devices used in many kinds of construction-the nail and the screw. Tools called hammers were used to install nails, and devices called screwdrivers were used to attach screws. There was a saying to the effect that the finest hammer made for a very poor screwdriver. Today, in our world, which uses neither nails nor screws, both tools are useless. The finest hammer would now have no utility whatsoever. The world has moved on. So, too, with robots. It is time we moved on to new and better robots, guided by new and better Laws.

“But wait, those of you who know your robots will say. The Three Laws must stand as they are, for all time, for they are intrinsic to the design of the positronic brain. As is well known, the Three Laws are implicate in the positronic brain. Thousands of years of brain design and manufacture have seen to that. All the positronic brains ever made can trace their ancestry back to those first crude brains made on Earth. Each new design has depended on all those that have gone before, and the Three Laws are folded into every positronic pathway, every nook and cranny of every brain. Every development in positronics has enfolded the Three Laws. We could no more make a positronic brain without the Three Laws than a human brain could exist without neurons.

“All that is so. But my colleague Gubber Anshaw has developed something new. It is a new beginning, a break with the past, a clean sheet of paper on which we can write whatever laws we like. He has invented the gravitonic brain. Built according to new principles, with tremendously greater capacity and flexibility, the gravitonic brain is our chance for a fresh start.

“Jomaine Terach, another member of our staff, performed most of the core programming for the gravitonic brain-including the programming of the New Laws into those brains, and the robots that contain them. Those robots, ladies and gentlemen, are scheduled to begin work on the Limbo Terraforming Project within a few days.”

And suddenly the audience realized that she was not merely talking theory. She was discussing real robot brains, not intellectual exercises. There were new shouts, some of anger, some of sheer amazement.

“Yes, these new robots are experimental,” Fredda went on, talking on before the audience reaction could gather too much force. “They will operateonly on the island of Purgatory. They will rebuild and reactivate the Limbo Terraforming Station. Special devices, range restricters, will prevent these New Law robots from functioning off the island. If they venture off it, they will shut down. They will work with a select team of Settler terraforming experts, and a group of Infernal volunteers, who have yet to be chosen.”