5 Super Weird Facts About Google

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Asimov's Laws of Robotics aren't the moral guidelines they appear to be

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Asimov's Laws of Robotics aren't the moral guidelines they appear to be Tithe Luadthong/Shutterstock Tom Sorell , University of Warwick Seventy-five years ago, the celebrated science fiction writer Isaac Asimov published a short story called Runaround . Set on Mercury, it features a sophisticated robot nicknamed Speedy that has been ordered to gather some of the chemical selenium for two human space adventurers. Speedy gets near the selenium, but a toxic gas threatens to destroy the robot. When it retreats from the gas to save itself, the threat recedes and it feels obliged to go back for the selenium. It is left going round in circles. Speedy is caught in a conflict between two of the laws that robots in Asimov’s stories follow as their core ethical programming: always obey human instructions and always protect your existence (as long as it doesn’t result in human injury). Speedy’s custodians resolve the robot’s conflict ...
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Blade Runner's chillingly prescient vision of the future

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Super-intelligence and eternal life: transhumanism's faithful follow it blindly into a future for the elite

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