From: sethcohen	Date: December 25th, 2007 07:22 pm (UTC)		(link)
	Yes, I actually send email like this

There's a point to this. Here's what I sent to some colleagues back in 2004:

As you all know, I have some small interest in robot operations. Over the weekend, my wife and I went to see an expose on the deficiences of the NS-5 ("Nestor") class robot manufactured by the U.S. Robot and Mechanical Men corporation. The NS-5 had been engineered to receive automatic software upgrades from USR; however, this process caused a conflict with hardwired safety programming, causing this newly-released robot to no longer be "Three Laws Safe". I enjoyed the film, but sadly found little application to our own situation here. After seeing the damage done by the end of the film to USR's physical plant and reputation, I'm pleased that we're using a McKesson product to perform our cartfill operations.

A review of the expose can be found via this link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343818/

Seth

	From: sethcohen	Date: December 25th, 2007 07:23 pm (UTC)		(link)
	Re: Yes, I actually send email like this

Here was Joseph's reply to my email:

It had not occurred to me before, but has anyone else noticed that our McKesson robot could be viewed as"0-for-3" with respect to the Laws?

First Law:

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. (The "inaction/come to harm" clause is key here; mysteriously missing doses, anyone?)

Second Law:

A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. (Self-explanatory, I think. The McKesson robot's frequent inability to "obey orders" for various reasons have been well documented)

Third Law:

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. (Downtime, crashes, lack of antivirus updating support, etc.)

Of course, as with any robot, the blame for failure to obey these laws can be placed squarely on the shoulders of the humans who programmed/built it (and perhaps a miniscule amount on those of us who work with it and maintain it), but I think it's interesting nonetheless.

Joseph

From: sorek	Date: December 25th, 2007 10:21 pm (UTC)		(link)

Over the weekend I've been catching up on Doctor Who Series 3 on DVD. After reading your blog post, I've got this image of Daleks melting snow with their weapons.

"Commence melting operations! Evaporate! Evaporate! Evaporate!"