Ain’t got time to read (image by Dall-E via the author)

Robots and Crime: The legacy of Issac Asimov

The Three Laws of Robotics are not what you thought

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Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, introduced in his 1942 short story Runaround but most famously enunciated in I, Robot, are, collectively, one of the most well known ideas in science fiction. But they are also terribly misunderstood. The laws purport to establish a set of rules for the governance of artificial intelligences, but in fact they are simply a narrative device allowing Asimov to explore the unintended consequences inherent in simple logical systems.

Early cover art for I, Robot by Issac Asimov

Asimov’s Three Laws were never intended as a genuine blueprint for AI alignment but rather as a means to demonstrate both Russell’s Paradox and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems.

• Russell’s Paradox — the set of all sets that do not belong to themselves; everything I say is a lie; who shaves the barber if the barber shaves everyone who does not shave themselves?
• Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems (hilariously regularly reduced to Godel’s Theorem despite there being both…