Let us assume that by some miraculous way problem is overcome and robots unfailingly identify humans. The next question pertains to notion of "injury" (still in First Law). Is it limited only to physical injury (the elimination of physical continuity of human tissues or of normal functioning of human body)?

Should "injury" in First Law encompass no less serious mental, verbal and social injuries (after all, they are all known to have physical side effects which are, at times, no less severe than direct physical "injuries")? Is an insult an "injury"? What about being grossly impolite, or psychologically abusive? Or offending religious sensitivities, being politically incorrect - are these injuries? The bulk of human (and, therefore, inhuman) actions actually offend one human being or another, have potential to do so, or seem to be doing so.

Consider surgery, driving a car, or investing money in stock exchange. These "innocuous" acts may end in a coma, an accident, or ruinous financial losses, respectively. Should a robot refuse to obey human instructions which may result in injury to instruction-givers?

Consider a mountain climber – should a robot refuse to hand him his equipment lest he falls off a cliff in an unsuccessful bid to reach peak? Should a robot refuse to obey human commands pertaining to crossing of busy roads or to driving (dangerous) sports cars?

Which level of risk should trigger robotic refusal and even prophylactic intervention? At which stage of interactive man-machine collaboration should it be activated? Should a robot refuse to fetch a ladder or a rope to someone who intends to commit suicide by hanging himself (that's an easy one)?

Should he ignore an instruction to push his master off a cliff (definitely), help him climb cliff (less assuredly so), drive him to cliff (maybe so), help him get into his car in order to drive him to cliff... Where do responsibility and obeisance bucks stop?

Whatever answer, one thing is clear: such a robot must be equipped with more than a rudimentary sense of judgment, with ability to appraise and analyse complex situations, to predict future and to base his decisions on very fuzzy algorithms (no programmer can foresee all possible circumstances). To me, such a "robot" sounds much more dangerous (and humanoid) than any recursive automaton which does NOT include famous Three Laws.

Moreover, what, exactly, constitutes "inaction"? How can we set apart inaction from failed action or, worse, from an action which failed by design, intentionally? If a human is in danger and robot tries to save him and fails – how could we determine to what extent it exerted itself and did everything it could?

How much of responsibility for a robot's inaction or partial action or failed action should be imputed to manufacturer – and how much to robot itself? When a robot decides finally to ignore its own programming – how are we to gain information regarding this momentous event? Outside appearances can hardly be expected to help us distinguish a rebellious robot from a lackadaisical one.

The situation gets much more complicated when we consider states of conflict.

Imagine that a robot is obliged to harm one human in order to prevent him from hurting another. The Laws are absolutely inadequate in this case. The robot should either establish an empirical hierarchy of injuries – or an empirical hierarchy of humans. Should we, as humans, rely on robots or on their manufacturers (however wise, moral and compassionate) to make this selection for us? Should we abide by their judgment which injury is more serious and warrants an intervention?

A summary of Asimov Laws would give us following "truth table":

A robot must obey human commands except if:

Obeying them is likely to cause injury to a human, or Obeying them will let a human be injured. A robot must protect its own existence with three exceptions:

That such self-protection is injurious to a human; That such self-protection entails inaction in face of potential injury to a human; That such self-protection results in robot insubordination (failing to obey human instructions). Trying to create a truth table based on these conditions is best way to demonstrate problematic nature of Asimov's idealized yet highly impractical world.

Here is an exercise:

Imagine a situation (consider example below or one you make up) and then create a truth table based on above five conditions. In such a truth table, "T" would stand for "compliance" and "F" for non-compliance.

Example:

A radioactivity monitoring robot malfunctions. If it self-destructs, its human operator might be injured. If it does not, its malfunction will equally seriously injure a patient dependent on his performance.

One of possible solutions is, of course, to introduce gradations, a probability calculus, or a utility calculus. As they are phrased by Asimov, rules and conditions are of a threshold, yes or no, take it or leave it nature. But if robots were to be instructed to maximize overall utility, many borderline cases would be resolved.

Still, even introduction of heuristics, probability, and utility does not help us resolve dilemma in example above. Life is about inventing new rules on fly, as we go, and as we encounter new challenges in a kaleidoscopically metamorphosing world. Robots with rigid instruction sets are ill suited to cope with that.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

The Internet (with a different name) became public property - with access granted to chosen few.

Radio took precisely this course. Radio transmissions started in USA in 1920. Those were anarchic broadcasts with no discernible regularity. Non commercial organizations and not for profit organizations began their own broadcasts and even created radio broadcasting infrastructure (albeit of cheap and local kind) dedicated to their audiences. Trade unions, certain educational institutions and religious groups commenced "public radio" broadcasts.

This is followed by Commercial Phase.

When users (e.g., listeners in case of radio, or owners of PCs and modems in example of Internet) reach a critical mass - business sector is alerted. In name of capitalist ideology (another religion, really) it demands "privatization" of medium. This harps on very sensitive strings in every Western soul : efficient allocation of resources which is result of competition; corruption and inefficiency which are naturally associated with public sector ("Other People’s Money" - OPM); ulterior motives of members of ruling political echelons (the infamous American Paranoia); a lack of variety and of catering to tastes and interests of certain audiences; equation private enterprise = democracy and more.

The end result is same : private sector takes over medium from "below" (makes offers to owners or operators of medium - that they cannot possibly refuse) - or from "above" (successful lobbying in corridors of power leads to appropriate legislation and medium is "privatized").

Every privatization - especially that of a medium - provokes public opposition. There are (usually founded) suspicions that interests of public were compromised and sacrificed on altar of commercialization and rating. Fears of monopolization and cartelization of medium are evoked - and justified, in due time. Otherwise, there is fear of concentration of control of medium in a few hands. All these things do happen - but pace is so slow that initial fears are forgotten and public attention reverts to fresher issues.

A new Communications Act was legislated in USA in 1934. It was meant to transform radio frequencies into a national resource to be sold to private sector which will use it to transmit radio signals to receivers. In other words : radio was passed on to private and commercial hands. Public radio was doomed to be marginalized.

The American administration withdrew from its last major involvement in Internet in April 1995, when NSF ceased to finance some of networks and, thus, privatized its hitherto heavy involvement in net.

A new Communications Act was legislated in 1996. It permitted "organized anarchy". It allowed media operators to invade each other’s territories.

Phone companies will be allowed to transmit video and cable companies will be allowed to transmit telephony, for instance. This is all phased over a long period of time - still, it is a revolution whose magnitude is difficult to gauge and whose consequences defy imagination. It carries an equally momentous price tag - official censorship. "Voluntary censorship", to be sure, somewhat toothless standardization and enforcement authorities, to be sure - still, a censorship with its own institutions to boot. The private sector reacted by threatening litigation - but, beneath surface it is caving in to pressure and temptation, constructing its own censorship codes both in cable and in internet media.

The third phase is Institutionalization.

It is characterized by enhanced activities of legislation. Legislators, on all levels, discover medium and lurch at it passionately. Resources which were considered "free", suddenly are transformed to "national treasures not to be dispensed with cheaply, casually and with frivolity".

It is conceivable that certain parts of Internet will be "nationalized" (for instance, in form of a licensing requirement) and tendered to private sector. Legislation will be enacted which will deal with permitted and disallowed content (obscenity ? incitement ? racial or gender bias ?)

No medium in USA (not to mention wide world) has eschewed such legislation. There are sure to be demands to allocate time (or space, or software, or content, or hardware, or bandwidth) to "minorities", to "public affairs", to "community business". This is a tax that business sector will have to pay to fend off eager legislator and his nuisance value.

All this is bound to lead to a monopolization of hosts and servers. The important broadcast channels will diminish in number and be subjected to severe content restrictions. Sites which will not succumb to these requirements - will be deleted or neutralized. Content guidelines (euphemism for censorship) exist, even as we write, in all major content providers (CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy).

The last, determining, phase is The Bloodbath.

This is phase of consolidation. The number of players is severely reduced. The number of browser types will be limited to 2-3 (Netscape, Microsoft and which else ?). Networks will merge to form privately owned mega-networks. Servers will merge to form hyper-servers run on supercomputers. The number of ISPs will be considerably diminished.

50 companies ruled greater part of media markets in USA in 1983. The number in 1995 was 18. At end of century they will number 6.

This is stage when companies - fighting for financial survival - strive to acquire as many users/listeners/viewers as possible. The programming is shallowed to lowest (and widest) common denominator. Shallow programming dominates as long as bloodbath proceeds.

In hindsight, 20 years hence, we might come to understand that computers improved our capacity to do things differently and more productively. But one thing is fast becoming clear. The added benefits of IT are highly sensitive to and dependent upon historical, psychosocial and economic parameters outside perimeter of technology itself. When it is introduced, how it is introduced, for which purposes is it put to use and even by who it was introduced - largely determine costs of its introduction and, therefore, its feasibility and contribution to enhancement of productivity. The CEE countries better take note.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com