Ask HN: What has happened to Azimov's rules for robots in 2025?

1 eimrine 3 5/19/2025, 6:33:56 PM

Why have people forgotten the three rules? There are numerous reports of the development of manned robots, semi-autonomous targeting devices, and the inevitable emergence of swarms of fully autonomous killer devices.

Comments (3)

pavel_lishin · 8h ago

The three rules were never meant to be a guideline for how to safely build artificial intelligences; the three rules were incredibly fallible, and most of the stories centered around how they weren't enough to protect neither humans nor robots, or about the unintended consequences of those rules.

I remember reading somewhere that Asimov explicitly made the rules faulty, so he could write interesting stories, but I don't know if that's apocryphal or not.

JohnFen · 8h ago

Exactly this.

For people who have never read the book "I, Robot" (which is unrelated to the movie), the entire unifying theme of the stories in the collection is how the Three Rules don't actually work.

bigyabai · 9h ago

Capitalism has one rule: is it profitable?

Much simpler to program around.

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Ask HN: What has happened to Azimov's rules for robots in 2025?

Comments (3)