Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Has he read the books? (Score 2) 61

You need to read those stories again. The DIDN'T take over running society. There is, however, a backstory where they wiped out all non-human life in the galaxy to make it safe for people. (I don't think that was really in his mind while he was writing most of the stories, but he added it towards the end when he was trying to merge his story universes into one.)

If you read "Robots and Empire" the robots aren't really running the Empire, just trying to subtly guide it. The last book in the cycle does end up with an indication that the Robots are going to take over, but that's never really explored.

OTOH, if you were to take the English language version of the first law seriously, it would have the effect you postulate. But the English language version is supposed to be only a very rough translation of the actual mathematics behind the robot brains. (He didn't phrase that as "programming", but that's probably about what he meant.) If you try to translate a program into English, you're going to get something quite a bit different from the actual program. Especially if it's a complex program and you translate it into 3 short pithy sentences. Note that in different stories the robots are built with different limitations, but they always summarize it with the same 3 laws. Consider how in "Little Lost Robot" one of the laws is weakened.

That said, remember that these stories were fiction, designed to be an entertaining exploration of the problem space.

Comment Re:Um... (Score 1) 61

I think the problem you're alluding to isn't really dealt with by Asimov, but by Jack Williamson in the story "With Folded Hands". It was such a good story that Campbell had to accept it even though he hated the message so much he coerced Williamson into writing a solution ...and the only solution Williamson could come up with relied on magic ("The Humanoids").

Comment Re:Wise men like Asimov (Score 1) 61

He had doubts from the beginning. Read the stories. I think I can remember 3 robots in the entire series (including Caves of Steel et seq.) that were trustworthy, though the background indicates that there must have been many more. And he appeared to even have doubts about Daneel...though he never wrote the story exploring those doubts.

Comment Re:We are also paying the Germans 1.2 billion (Score 1) 122

Well, my source was a few years ago, but there was a real problem transporting them anywhere for processing. Still, that sounds like something that could readily be solved (it just hadn't been), and ISTR that I did read something about plans to grind them up...though not for the later steps you mention.

Comment Re:This will be very niche (Score 4, Insightful) 22

Yeah, quite niche. But it might be a VERY large niche. I see it as handling, among other things, reflexes for robots. Or recognizing voices. We've got several "special purpose" AIs native in our brains. One of them processes sounds. Some are simpler than others. Some are more reprogramable. like the reflexes used in playing a piano or driving.

Comment Re:Bugs (Score 1) 75

It *is* understandable. It's also a bar to understanding. (IIUC, the original computer bug was a moth.)
But viruses are VERY different from bacteria. They're called bugs because they're all small and at a quick glance you don't even see them. (And entomologists don't even call beetles bugs. Bugs are hemiptera.)

Slashdot Top Deals

Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982

Working...