I work at a robotics company. While I personally have no robotics background, I've had several conversations with a wide variety of "robot people" about the specific question "what is a robot?" It turns out it's not a simple question where everyone agrees on the answer.

But in all those conversations, with all those people (who make robots for a living) ... no one has ever proposed "must make decisions on their own" as a prerequisite for being a robot.

Law enforcement doesn't care about your rights, only about catching criminals. They wanted to be able to say to a cellphone company "tell me everyone whose cellphone was within range of these three towers (ie. everyone in a particular location) to catch some criminals".

The judge said "hell no! This is America, we have the 4th amendment, and the highest court in the land said it still applies in 2026: you can't just ask for everyone in an area, because you're effectively 'searching' tons of innocent people to find a criminal, and that's exactly what the 4th says you can't do."

He's saying "do you want robot cars to be as good as humans, or safer?"

If the goal is just "as good as a human" then (in theory) we have "proof of concept" that that can be achieved (humans drive cars all the time) ...

... but, humans also get in accidents all the time. If the goal of self-driving cars is to do *better* than the humans, stopping at what humans can achieve (with "cameras (eyes) only"), safety-wise, isn't good enough. If you want "safer than human", as Google evidently does, you need LIDAR.

It's 2026, and a significant news story amounts to "CEO told employees to do what's good for the business".

If you had told me in 2025, 2024, etc. that a headline-worthy event would be a CEO saying the most obvious thing in the world ("do what's good for the business") I never would have believed you.

Just one simple question, which will hopefully become more relevant early next year ... is this an impeachable crime?

And?

AI is a tool. My hammer doesn't need to grok the reality of the nail to be useful for hammering it in. By the same token, AI doesn't need to simulate reality to do useful things in reality.

I mean, that's certainly one take on his stories.

Another would be that for thousands and thousands of years (in his universe) the laws of robotics not only worked great, they were the entire foundation for a pivotal technology (robots). That technology was in turn essential for letting an entire civilization colonize countless planets.

Without the laws of robotics, humanity would still be stuck on a single planet.

It's actually a pretty common definition, and in fact people often generalize "Nazi" far more than I did. Ever hear of Senifeld's "Soup Nazi"? He had nothing to do with Jews or stealing people's land and possessions .. but America clearly understood his title.

I find that distinction amusing: Israel itself is a Nazi country now, if you define Nazi as "someone who did what the Nazi's did to a group of oppressed people" and not just "people who hate Jews".

If you look at how the Palestinian people are losing their country, and having all their land and possessions taken from them, being pushed into what can only be described as "ghettos" ... tell me that isn't exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews, gays, gypsies, etc. (just before they took it a step further with the gas chambers).

And if you look at Isareli politics, I think you'll find a disturbing percentage of the country would happily gas every Palestinian ... if they could.

But again, how do you separate the two?

If China flouts international law for years, but there's no specific trigger for a US response, is that protectionist (again, there was no specific trigger) or retaliatory (for the years of flouting international law)?

In the real world things aren't white or black: every government action can't be cleanly divided into neat categories.

Sure, but first off, we're talking about bans here (not tariffs).

Still, lumping them together ... what makes it "not retaliatory" and protectionist? Surely it's both to a degree? Some % of it came from Trump liking protectionism, and some % came from people getting fed up with China's practices?

On the one hand, Trump and his idiotic fixation "America First!" goes against all sorts of (unbiased) economic wisdom. I'm strongly against protectionist policies.

But on the flip side, I work in this industry, and China is well known for blatantly stealing American IP. If they won't play by international IP rules, something like this feels like the right response ... I just question if it's really, long-term the right approach, or just a knee-jerk reaction that won't help (and may hurt).

We are talking about computer programs, not sci-fi fantasies.

To be psychopathic they'd have to be human: you are projecting way too much personification on a computer program.

You are anthropomorphizing a computer program, and attributing super-human powers to it to boot ... which is exactly what the AI companies want!

An AI is no different from (say) Microsoft Word: it does not have magic powers. It is good at putting together chains of actions and of finding vulnerabilities, and when IRRESPONSIBLY LEFT TO RUN WITH THE RIGHT PROMPT AND NO VIRTUALIZATION OR OTHER ISOLATION ... it can "run rogue" ... the same way Word's spell checker can run rogue if you just auto click accept, even when its correcting perfectly valid English words.

There's zero agency: it did not "break out" or do anything like it ... it's just code that a human ran irresponsibly.