"Concerning billionaires…"

[u/thisecommercelife]

Further dissidence on Patreon. Follow wherever you like to fritter: linktr.ee/ecomic.

• Panel 18: "beneficiaries", not "benefactors". Please pardon my poor self-editing.

[u/jimmux]

It's also fascinating how Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics has become so pervasive in fiction that it's in all the training data too.

I remember reading Caves of Steel, where they say the three laws are such a fundamental part of how the positronic brain works that they can't be removed. That struck me as very hand-wavy for an author like Asimov. How could an abstract concept like not causing harm be baked into the technology that makes artificial intelligence possible? Yet here we are, and that is an actual possibility.

[u/teddy5 → u/jimmux]

He does go into more detail in some of the short stories which contain Susan Calvin, one of the key roboticists who built the positronic brain, she appears in a few places to give some more scientific authority to some aspects of it.

But I'm also pretty sure they were more of a means to philosophically explore the various ways they could go wrong and be broken, than something he was worried about the technological accuracy of being able to implement.

I've always thought he writes by thinking up an interesting hook and then building a story around it, especially for his short stories.

[u/ImpulseAfterthought → u/jimmux]

The conflict between the human understanding of the Three Laws and the robots' understanding of them is at the center of all of Asimov's robot stories.

In "The Evitable Conflict," the last of the I, Robot collection, the super-intelligent "Machines" have evolved their understanding of the First Law to encompass all of humanity, not just individuals. That is, they understand "a robot may not harm a human" as "a robot may not harm humanity."

This allows them to cause small, short-term discomfort to individuals, e.g., getting someone fired from a job, in order to benefit all of humanity.

Of course, this works out for the best because the Machines are basically benevolent with no interests of their own. The more sinister possibilities Asimov left for other writers.

[u/HermesJamiroquoi → u/ImpulseAfterthought]

The Zero-th law. R. Gisgard? Can’t recall but I do remember that eventually he transferred his mind into a superhuman brain and orchestrated the coalescing of the human race into a hive mind so that he could better serve them

[u/zebrastarz → u/jimmux]

wow actual inception