Asimov's Three Laws

The cluster revolves around discussions of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, comparing them to AI safety rules or prompts and referencing how his stories demonstrate their flaws, ambiguities, and unintended consequences.

➡️ Stable 0.6x AI & Machine Learning
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Keywords

IQ AI IMHO AGI LLM BECAUSE en.m NDR wikipedia.org asimov robot laws robotics stories humanity robots law human conflict

Sample Comments

beachwood23 Apr 22, 2016 View on HN

Asiimov's Three Laws of Robotics, right?

wsinks Nov 7, 2017 View on HN

Sounds like Asimov's 3 laws.

jgfoot Jun 29, 2011 View on HN

Asimov's "I, Robot" stories cover this territory well. The robots must follow three laws, which are simple enough on their surface, but in application prove tough to predict. The humans begin to see that the laws have unintended and undesirable consequences.

lylejohnson Jan 21, 2011 View on HN

Tell me more about those rules are surprisingly similar to Isaac Asimov's 3 laws of robotics.

jmclnx Jul 2, 2024 View on HN

So much for Isaac Asimov's Robotics Rules :(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics

galaxyLogic Jan 22, 2026 View on HN

How does this compare with Asimov's Laws of Robotics?

instaheat May 13, 2018 View on HN

This reminds me of I, Robot:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics

liberabaci Feb 15, 2019 View on HN

What happened to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics?

mrob May 25, 2018 View on HN

Asimov's Three Laws don't even work in the fictional setting. A common theme of his robot stories is humans investigating strange or harmful behavior of robots, that ultimately turns out to be a consequence of the laws as the robot understood them. They're good storytelling, but bad real-life ethics.

chuckadams May 23, 2025 View on HN

Indeed, I, Robot is made up entirely of stories in which the Laws of Robotics break down. Starting from a mindless mechanical loop of oscillating between one law's priority and another, to a future where they paternalistically enslave all humanity in order to not allow them to come to harm (sorry for the spoilers).As for what Asimov thought of the wisdom of the laws, he replied that they were just hooks for telling "shaggy dog stories" as he put it.