There is only one good way to find out which philosopher is right.  Of course, that is a football match.

Or a Fight.

Hang on, that’s 2 ways.

Never mind. Asimov, who wasn’t a philosopher, merely a writer of fiction (pah!) realised that maybe we need to put rules in place to keep robots in their place. But I’ve always thought that would never work. Not because rules wouldn’t be enforceable or that the rules might somehow have holes in them. But because the software is written by programmers. Who, actually write more fantastical loose prose than the writers I mentioned earlier.

In fact the “software is a steaming pile of do-do” issue is only slightly overshadowed by an even bigger problem. Quite good programmers who like a challenge.  Yes the virus writers. Nothing to stop a well written carefully targeted piece of kernel code from circumventing any rule you put in place.

But, don’t worry. We are unlikely every to have to answer the question of robot sentience. Mainly because we can confuse the hell out of any robot and make it blow its logic fuses with a simple pair of sentences:

The next sentence is false. The previous sentence is true.

Boom!

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 12th, 2013 at 12:01 am and is filed under RoboGeek Episodes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.