"A robot can not perform any action, or by inaction allow anyone to perform it, which is harmful to humanity, even when it conflicts with the other three laws". - Zeroth Law of Robotics.
The ideas in various science fiction books, are born in response to problems that writers already predicted. As in the case of George Orwell, considering that facts must be defended over manipulated interpretations of reality. In this case, the philosophical reflection about a possible future in which synthetic intelligences coexist with us, gave as a result an entire mythology about the Robots and their role, from their appearance to the interstellar future of Humanity, mythology created by Isaac Asimov.
What will human beings do when encountering humanoids that possess superior abilities? An intelligence of superior characteristics would represent a danger to humanity? Isaac Asimov delved into these issues by writing a large number of novels that would become a whole mythology around the Robots.
Three Laws of Robotics
One of Asimov's best-known ideas is The Three Laws of Robotics. Three principles that would be the key to the interaction between humans and robots, these laws are:
1st Law - "A robot will not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to suffer damage".
2nd Law - "A robot must obey the orders given by humans, except if these orders conflict with the first order".
3rd Law - "A robot must protect its own existence to the extent that this protection does not conflict with the first or second law".
Now, the first law exposes us the fear of the machine, the fear that our technology will lead us to destruction. The second law expresses the fear that someone else will use our technology against us. And the third law shows us that despite everything, we continue to depend on the machine, that is why we do not want it to be destroyed. They seem to be very well thought laws, however, Asimov shows us how a law that seems to be perfect can be used for evil purposes. The same thing that we see in humanity, where people believe that their ideas are the right ones, but end up committing nefarious acts by clinging to those ideas.
Humanity has been automating its actions, in search of "solutions" to its problems, giving the field of robotics a wide space of development, which will eventually make robots fully involved in the work of human beings. There is thus the fear that once this scenario becomes reality, a gigantic social crisis will break out, since not only would jobs be lost, but we would also be replaced in tasks that would go from personal company to sex. But this is not what Isaac Asimov saw, it was not only the robotic domination over humanity, he saw something else, something more confusing, even more than our dependence on technology.
Questions arise when entering into the hypothetical future, the question arises between them is if its better individual well-being or the welfare of humanity. And for that reason we have 3 possible futures that Asimov would exhibit in his work.
The first one is that a supercomputer will be responsible for the economy, and over time said computer improves and understands that it can have more influence in society through the economy, implementing at first a very subtle government of humanity, and then evolving to transform humanity into something similar to a divine entity that guides it to the end of the Universe.
The second one is that a group of humans organize themselves to dictate the future, either to gain the deepest knowledge of humanity, or with enough technology to alter time itself. It is the idea that an elite directs the entire species.
And the third one is the destruction, the idea that the differences between humans would devastate the species with the passage of millennia, since these differences become very large, giving way to an unimaginable war that would end with the existence of all the humanity.
According to Asimov, the imposition of power was, is and will be what determines the future of humanity.
And what does all this have to do with robots and the zeroth law? As we are exposed in the saga of Foundation, humanity has established a galactic empire, but that empire will collapse by its own weight, due to the inability of human beings to govern themselves, even more on a galactic scale, remaining as hope something called "The Psychohistory", a science that allows to predict the behavior of the great masses, after having fallen the empire, a new one is founded, this new empire is guided by the Psychohistory, where the robots no longer have a place , since in the past of the empire it was defined that the robots were a brake for the advancement of the curiosity of the human being, besides that, living a great amount of time took them to comfort, which did not support the exploration of the space.
Zeroth Law of Robotics
In the entire saga a robot appears, called R. Daneel Olivaw, which reveals that he has guided all humanity from the shadows, and that he has been the main creator of Psychohistory, being thus a kind of guardian of humanity, all this due to the Law zero, a law created by a Robot.
"A robot can not perform any action, or by inaction allow anyone to do it, which is harmful to humanity, even when it conflicts with the other three laws".
Basically, this law tells us that robots should not cause any harm to humanity or inaction allow humanity to suffer some damage. And this is not something so simple to understand, since a final question would arise.
What is humanity?
Humanity is a subjectivity, a set of abstract properties such as art, belief, morals, ethics, philosophy, are part of what we could define as humanity, those things that we can not explain in a really objective way, and that is why not all human beings are Humanists, in addition to that, all humans do not share the same vision about humanity.
We live in a world in which technology begins to be more symbiotic to the human being, and we must remember that technology always implies consequences that we do not expect, when Asimov talks about a zero law of robotics, and that this is created by a robot, tells us about how a synthetic intelligence could end humanity as we know it today.
Can you imagine that an artificial intelligence define the good or the bad for humanity? For Isaac Asimov, the power and its imposition have a great importance, that is why the masses because of their amount, are imposed on the individual, so for Asimov, it was not so important that there was a democracy but a kind of functional guide for the species. Despite this, it is argued that there are individuals who can exercise such a great power that the masses could not resist.
We thus have a world in which the interaction between the individual and the masses creates the future of humanity. The zero law is a way to take care of the individual of the masses, since these could be the salvation for the future of the species, so a robot could set aside some of the laws to defend everyone because of an individual .
In the end the laws show us something, that technology does not exist without having an objective, and that goal was created by a human. Whether or not these laws are used in the future, the fact that they were created, allow us to have a preview of what the future might be. Asimov, exposed us that robots could be used, either to give us all the pleasure we wanted, or to serve as tools that allowed us to expand our borders. Today we use robots for different tasks, and we also use them for military purposes, so we can see that the laws of robotics are not being used, but they are still present waiting to be implemented.
There have been few who have spoken about the danger that the development of artificial intelligence would represent, a brilliant mind that spoke about this was the late Stephen Hawking, when he said that "artificial intelligence predicts the end of the human race", being a voice that was heard when alerting us to the possible threat that artificial intelligence could be for all of us.
Finally, I hope you can take the time to read some of the books of Isaac Asimov, and that this post has put you to think a bit about the subject. It's all for today, until next time.