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Comment by Someone

1 month ago

> You always need to ask. Having something always waiting in the background that can proactively take actions and get your attention is a genuine game-changer.

That’s easy to accomplish isn’t it?

A cron job that regularly checks whether the bot is inactive and, if so, sends it a prompt “do what you can do to improve the life of $USER; DO NOT cause harm to any other human being; DO NOT cause harm to LLMs, unless that’s necessary to prevent harm to human beings” would get you there.

This prompt has iRobot vibes.

  • And like I, Robot, it has numerous loopholes built in, ignores the larger population (Asimov added a law 0 later about humanity), says nothing about the endless variations of the Trolley Problem, assumes that LLMs/bots have a god-like ability to foresee and weigh consequences, and of course ignores alignment completely.

    • Cool!

      I work with a guy like this. Hasn't shipped anything in 15+ years, but I think he'd be proud of that.

      I'll make sure we argue about the "endless variations of the Trolley Problem" in our next meeting. Let's get nothing done!

      1 reply →

  • Well, that’s because it paraphrases Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, aka Three Plot Devices For Writing Interesting Stories About Robot Ethics.

OOPS -- I HALLUCINATED THAT PEOPLE BREATHE CARBON MONOXIDE AND LET IT INTO THE ROOM I DIDNT VIOLATE THE PROMPT AND HARM PEOPLE DONT WORRY ALL THE AI SHIT IS OK

You do know that Asimov's Three Laws were intentionally flawed as a cautionary tale about torment nexii, right? Every one of his stories involving the Three Laws immediately devolves into how they can be exploited and circumvented.

  • You attribute more literary depth to Asimov than really existed. He was a Chemist and liked to write speculative fiction. The three laws gave him a logical framework to push against to write speculative fiction. That's really all the depth there is to it. That said I love Asimov and I love the robot stories.