Beyond Asimov: The Three Laws of Responsible Robotics

by Robin R. Murphy and David D. Woods

IEEE Intelligent Systems, July/August 2009, pp. 14–20

Since their codification in 1947 in the collection of short stories I, Robot, Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics have been a staple of science fiction. Most of the stories assumed that the robot had complex perception and reasoning skills equivalent to a child and that robots were subservient to humans. Although the laws were simple and few, the stories attempted to demonstrate just how difficult they were to apply in various real-world situations. In most situations, although the robots usually behaved "logically," they often failed to do the "right" thing, typically because the particular context of application required subtle adjustments of judgment on the part of the robot (for example, determining which law took priority in a given situation, or what constituted helpful or harmful behavior).

[The full article]