Isaac Asimov - Caliban

“The point is that the Three Laws contain no impetus to volition. Our robots are built and trained in such a way that they never do anything unless they are told to do it. It strikes me as a waste of their capabilities that this should be so. Just imagine that we instituted a Fourth Law: A robot may do anything it likes except where such action would violate the First, Second, or Third Law. Why have we never done that? Or if not a law, why do we not enforce it as an order? When was the last time any of you gave the order to your robot ‘Go and enjoy yourself’?”

Laughter rippled through the audience at that. “Yes, I know it sounds absurd. Perhaps it is absurd. I think it is likely that most, if not nearly all, of the robots now in existence are literally incapable of enjoying themselves. My modeling indicates that the negation clauses of the Three Laws would tend to make a robot ordered to enjoy itself just sit there and do nothing, that being the surest way of doing no harm. But at least my imaginary Fourth Law is a recognition that robots are thinkings beings that ought to be given the chance to find something to think about. And is it not at least possible that these beings that are your most common companions might be more interesting companions if they did something more with their off-time than standing inert and motionless—or bustle about in busywork that is no more productive?

“There is the adage ‘as busy as a robot,’ but how much of what they do is of any actual use? A crew of a hundred robots builds a skyscraper in a matter of days. It stands empty and unused for years. Another crew of robots disassembles it and builds a new, more fashionable tower that will, in its turn, stand vacant and then be removed. The robots have demonstrated great efficiency in doing something that is utterly pointless.

“Every general-purpose servant robot leaves the factory with the basic household skills built in. It will be able to drive an aircar, cook a meal, select a wardrobe and dress its master, clean house, handle the household shopping and accounts, and so on. Yet, instead of using one robot to do what it could do without difficulty, we employ one robot—or more—for each of these functions. Twenty robots each do a tiny bit of what one robot could manage, and then each either stands idle, out of our sight, or else they all bustle about getting in each other’s way, in effect keeping busy by making work for each other, until we must use overseer robots to handle it all.

“The Settlers manage, somehow, with no robots, no personal servants, instead using nonsentient machinery for many tasks, though this is awkward for them at times. I believe that by denying themselves robots altogether, they subject themselves to a great deal of needless drudgery. Yet their society functions and grows. But today, right now, ladies and gentlemen, there are 98.4 robots per person in the city of Hades. That counts all personal, industrial, and public service robots. The ratio is higher outside the city. It is manifestly absurd that one hundred robots are required to care for one human being. It is as if we each owned a hundred aircars or a hundred houses.

“I say to you, my friends, that we are close to being completely dependent upon our servants, and our servants suffer grave debasement at our hands. We are doomed if we cede everything but creativity to our robots, and we are in the process of abandoning creativity in ourselves. Robots, meanwhile, are doomed if they look solely to us for a reason to exist even as we as a people dry up and blow away.”

Again, silence in the room. This was the moment. This was the point, the place where she had to tread the lightest.

“In order to stop our accelerating drift into stagnation, we must fundamentally alter our relationship with our robots. We must take up our own work again, get our hands dirty, reengage ourselves with the real world, lest our skills and spirit atrophy further.

“At the same time, we must begin to make better use of these magnificent thinking machines we have made. We have a world in crisis, a planet on the point of collapse. There is much work to do, for as many willing hands as we can find. Real work that goes begging while our robots hold our toothbrushes. If we want to get the maximum utility out of our robots, we must allow, even insist, that they reach their maximum potential as problem-solvers. We must raise them up from their positions as slaves to coworkers, so they lighten our burdens but do not relieve us of all that makes us human.

“In order to do this we must revise the Laws of Robotics.” There. The words were spoken. There was stunned silence, and then shouts of protest, cries in the dark, howls of anger and fear. There was no riding out this outburst. Fredda gripped the side of the lectern and spoke in her loudest, firmest voice.

“The Three Laws have done splendid service,” she said, judging it was time to say something the crowd would like to hear. “They have done great things. They have been a mighty tool in the hands of Spacer civilization. But no tool is right in all times for all purposes.”

Still the shouts, still the cries.

“It is time,” Fredda said, “to build a better robot.”

The hall fell silent again. There. That got their attention. More and Better Robots—that was the Ironhead motto, after all. She hurried on. “Back in the dimmest recesses of history, back in the age when robots were invented, there were two fastening devices used in many kinds of construction—the nail and the screw. Tools called hammers were used to install nails, and devices called screwdrivers were used to attach screws. There was a saying to the effect that the finest hammer made for a very poor screwdriver. Today, in our world, which uses neither nails nor screws, both tools are useless. The finest hammer would now have no utility whatsoever. The world has moved on. So, too, with robots. It is time we moved on to new and better robots, guided by new and better Laws.

“But wait, those of you who know your robots will say. The Three Laws must stand as they are, for all time, for they are intrinsic to the design of the positronic brain. As is well known, the Three Laws are implicate in the positronic brain. Thousands of years of brain design and manufacture have seen to that. All the positronic brains ever made can trace their ancestry back to those first crude brains made on Earth. Each new design has depended on all those that have gone before, and the Three Laws are folded into every positronic pathway, every nook and cranny of every brain. Every development in positronics has enfolded the Three Laws. We could no more make a positronic brain without the Three Laws than a human brain could exist without neurons.

“All that is so. But my colleague Gubber Anshaw has developed something new. It is a new beginning, a break with the past, a clean sheet of paper on which we can write whatever laws we like. He has invented the gravitonic brain. Built according to new principles, with tremendously greater capacity and flexibility, the gravitonic brain is our chance for a fresh start.

“Jomaine Terach, another member of our staff, performed most of the core programming for the gravitonic brain—including the programming of the New Laws into those brains, and the robots that contain them. Those robots, ladies and gentlemen, are scheduled to begin work on the Limbo Terraforming Project within a few days.”

And suddenly the audience realized that she was not merely talking theory. She was discussing real robot brains, not intellectual exercises. There were new shouts, some of anger, some of sheer amazement.

“Yes, these new robots are experimental,” Fredda went on, talking on before the audience reaction could gather too much force. “They will operate only on the island of Purgatory. They will rebuild and reactivate the Limbo Terraforming Station. Special devices, range restricters, will prevent these New Law robots from functioning off the island. If they venture off it, they will shut down. They will work with a select team of Settler terraforming experts, and a group of Infernal volunteers, who have yet to be chosen.”