Comment by ooloncoloophid
5 hours ago
On Asimov, much as I loved those stories as a teenager, it was only later that I realised the robot stories are largely explorations of how apparently sensible rule-based systems generate unexpected and sometimes harmful outcomes. The Three Laws are presented as hard guardrails, but the stories focus on ambiguities, loopholes, and unintended consequences. I'm not sure how intentional this was; he might have been attempting to make a point about rule-based systems, or perhaps he was following his instinct for drama.
The books were absolutely an exploration of the suitability of the rules, combined with asking what do we actually want.
He was very clear to stipulate that the laws themselves were more than the text that represents them, no word play or creative interpretation was possible. This is much easier to do as an author than it is as a developer. You just declare that part as having been susessfully done by scientists.
The rules were their clear semantic meaning. Some of the stories explore the implications of changes to the laws either by design or accident.
I feel like the most interesting ones are the stories where the laws are working and have undesirable outcomes. It reveals that even if fully obeyed, they do not represent what we want.
Some of that is because what we want is dependent on situations that can go beyond safety and harm. Some of it is outright human hypocrisy.
When he gets to things like a closeted robot running for president he makes thebpoin clear about how if the bodies appear alike, you can't tell the difference by the behaviour of a robot conforming to the laws and a good person. That led to the obvious way to distinguish them was to get it to do something bad. The solution on how to fake that might have been a subtle dig at class based society.
It's been some 20 years since I last read the stories, I wonder if there's any point now given my ability to record new information in my youth significantly exceeded my ability to retain it now. I suspect after a week my youthful recall would be better than my week old recall.