Caliban

“I have said that all human inventions are reflections of the times in which they were created. If that is so, the Three Laws are reflected from a dark mirror indeed. They reflect a time when machines were feared and distrusted, when technology was correctly perceived as often malevolent, when a gain made by a machine could come only at the cost of a loss to a human, when even the richest man was poor by the standards of our time, and the poor were deeply-and understandably-resentful of the rich. I have said and will say many negative things about our robot-based culture tonight, but there are many bright and shining positives as well. We have lost not only the fact of poverty but the ability to conceive of it. We are not afraid of each other, and our machines serve us, not we the machines. We have built many great and lovely things.

“Yet our entire world, our whole culture, is built around Three Laws that were written in a time of savagery. Their form and phrasing are as they are in part to placate the fearful, semibarbaric masses of that time. They were, I submit, even at the time of their invention, an overreaction to the circumstances. Today they are almost completely detached from present reality.

“So:What are robots for? In the beginning, of course, the answer was simple. They were for doing work. But today, as a result of those Three Laws written so long ago, the original uses for robots have almost become subordinate to the task of cocooning and coddling humanity.

“That was clearly not the intent of the people who wrote those Three Laws. But each Law has developed its own subtext over time, formed a set of implications that became evident only after robots and humans lived together for a long time-and these implications become difficult to see from within a society that has had a long association with robots.

“Let us step back and look at the Laws, starting with the First Law of Robotics:A robot may not injure a human being, or,through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. This is of course perfectly reasonable-or so we tell each other. Since robots are very much stronger than human beings, robots must be forbidden to use that strength against humans. This is analogous to our own human-to-human prohibitions against violence. It prevents one human from using a robot as a weapon against another, by, for example, ordering a robot to kill an enemy. It makes robots utterly trustworthy.

“But this Law also definesany robot’s existence as secondary toany human’s. This made more sense in an age when robots were incapable of speech or complex reasoning, but all modem robots are at least that capable. It made sense in a day when the poor were many and robots were expensive and few. Otherwise, the rich might easily have ordered their playthings to defend themselves against the mob, with disastrous results. Yet, still, today, in all times, in all places, the existence of the noblest, bravest, wisest, strongest robot is as nothing when compared to the life of the most despicable, monstrous, murderous criminal.

“The second clause of the First Law further means that in the presence of robots humans do not need to protect themselves. If I pull a gun on Sheriff Kresh in the front row here, he knows that he need do nothing.” For a weird, fleeting second, Fredda considered just how pleasant it would be to do just that. Kresh was a threat. There was no doubt about that. “His personal robot, Donald, would protect him. Ariel, the robot on the stage behind me, would disarm me. In a very real sense, Sheriff Kresh would have no responsibility to keep himself alive. If he climbed a mountain, I doubt that Donald would allow him to make the ascent without five or six robots along, climbing ahead of him and behind him, ready at all times to prevent him from falling. A robot would urgently attempt to talk its master out of such a dangerous activity in the first place.

“The fact that such overprotection takes all of the fun out of mountain climbing explains at least in part why none of us go mountain climbing anymore.,

“In similar, if more subtle fashion, living with robots has trained us to regard all risk as bad, and all risk as equal. Because robotsmust protect us from harm, and must not, through inaction, allow us to come to harm, they struggle endlessly to watch for any danger, no matter how slight, for that is what we have told them to do.