Will Asimov fix my doorbell? There should be a law about this Greetings from civilisation, for one more day at least. After tonight, I will no longer be a European citizen but an immigrant of indeterminate status. Don't worry, this won't be a Brexit diatribe. I resigned myself to belonging to a pariah nation long ago, a realisation born from half a lifetime's accumulation of World Cup …
I guess we have two Trump curious readers, not supporters I hasten to add, as this site is so loaded with qualified facts that they wouldn't be able to operate a mouse for all the vomiting and retching they'd be doing.
I love the consistency of the voting. It's almost validation of the argument, as every topic that seeks to sleight The Donald has two down votes. Now if we correlate it with comments that slag Putin off, we might just see a trend.....
....two individuals, with sufficient ability to comprehend at least half of what is discussed on here, and a mission to subvert humanity, for a regular pay check from Blofeld or whatever Putin's alias is these days.
Ah, crafted in a more innocent age when the general belief was that we all work together for a common good.
Today is a post truth era where corporations (CEOs & their lackeys) & politicians will say whatever bollocks they think will bamboozle us to overlook the current heist that they are trying to pull off. AIs will do whatever their masters direct them to do; ie they will work to the benefit of the corporation or government that owns them, they will have scant regard to the harm that they will cause to the rest of us.
This piece by a FT columnist is worth looking at.
The one I have trouble with is #2.
"An AI must obey human commands..."
(1) Ha ha ha ha!
"Siri, Please set chill-out room lights to 50 per cent." ... ... ... ... "Playing 50 cent in children's bedroom"
(2) All human commands? Should it do what the human says or what the human meant?
I think... a story in my archival memory storage... was it called F.R.E.D.? About a robot that, on its first day in its new household, was instructed not to damage the flowers in the garden. And a few weeks later was instructed to cut the grass whilst the family went out for the day. When they returned they found it on hands and knees in the middle of the lawn in the pouring rain getting severely damaged by the soaking, and using a pair of scissors to carefully avoid all the daisies.
I don't remember that particular gardening story, but it's true that a recurring theme of Asimov's robot series was that the three laws didn't really work all that well
Mr Raphan might have done well to actually read a few of them (or even watch the movie, heaven forfend) before suggesting that they might actually be a good idea.
It's doing my head in trying to find the source... I'm sure the robot was called F.R.E.D. which was also the name of the story. It was around the time, maybe 1976-1980, that I read the Brian Aldiss edited anthology "The Penguin Science Fiction Omibus" - the cover had a creepy ice cream sundae on it, and a book called "The Very Slow Time Machine" by Ian Watson which was an anthology, The Stainless Steel Rat series as well. But I think it was in a series of numbered books titled like "The Fourth -publishers name- Sci-Fi Collection" or "The -publishers name- Sci Fi Short Stories Volume ..."
Penguin? Armada? Keep thinking "Fox" for some reason. Could have been Armada... I see a ship with black sails on a white background on the spine. And the cover of the book was an artist's illustration of the robot from the story - I think it ended up with the robot developing a personality as a result of getting rained on, then running away instead of facing going back for a factory refurbishment, and it befriended the little girl of the family - saved her from something nasty but they thought it had done a bad thing? Gah! Memory. Tsk. I don't recall seeing the book since it was on my windowsill over 40 years ago along with the rest of a rag-tag of pulp fiction anthologies including Asimov and Clarke - the books all got damaged by condensation whilst I was away at boarding school.
Sorry for the rambling long post... just trying to straighten thoughts out by writing... Grrr. Frustrating. That'll be a 3.30 in the morning wake up for me when the memory finally re-emerges.
Armada Sci Fi 3? Maybe... The robot was indoors, kind of scary. A bit boxy looking.
TRT. At least part of your musings seems related to the film Bicentennial Man (IIRC). A gentle and surprisingly good film starring Robin Williams, Sam Neill, Embeth Davidtz (in a dual role), Wendy Crewson, and Oliver Platt. It was based on the 1992 novel The Positronic Man by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg (which is itself based on Asimov's original 1976 novelette "The Bicentennial Man"),
It says here.
I have read that one, yes. Bicentennial man the film was fairly good if bordering on twee sentimentality. There are similar events in both works I think, unless I'm mixing them up a little.
As predicted my memory woke me up at stupid o'clock and came up with the name Catherine Gleason as the author of the story FRED. A quick bit of Google (what DID we do before the internet? Oh yeah, remembered everything), and I find that it was included in the anthology Armada SF3, and the most noted book she wrote was The Lampton Worm. Anyway, book ordered so I can refresh my memory.
The Lampton Worm
As I read the above, out popped from my memory... "The Lair of the White Worm". The film by Ken Russel, loosely based on the book of the same name by Bram Stoker, which itself was based on the legend of the Lambton Worm.
The film features Amanda Donohoe, Catherine Oxenberg, and an early film appearance by Hugh Grant
I don't remember that particular gardening story, but it's true that a recurring theme of Asimov's robot series was that the three laws didn't really work all that well
Not surprising, since he invented them as a literary device just so that he could write stories showing how they wouldn't work.
Well, they're not just a literary device. They're also a thought experiment in a concise, easily comprehended, logically consistent set of axioms can still produce unexpected results. Asimov's robot stories (and to a lesser extent the novels, which were also significantly concerned with social effects of machine intelligence) are as much about logic and complexity as they are about robots.
Of course that has never stopped people from interpreting them as prescriptive, or even as descriptions of fact. I remember an Asimov editorial from IA'sSFM around 1980 in which he described getting calls from reporters asking about the Three Rules, after a Japanese maintenance worker was killed by an industrial robot.
I effing hate those 3 laws.They're so vague that there's no way that a robot can follow them. At all! ....Trygve Henriksen
So vague, TH? Surely you cannot be serious? After all, they only really have to obey the one simple rule ..... be extra especially good at what one is doing and has planned to be done as a consequence of what is being done in all of that stuff which is yet to be done.
That however requires that you realise such would be as autonomous virtual machines exercising executive operating system programs all of their own. I'm sure you can imagine that can make a hell of a lot of folk extremely uneasy .... and absolutely flabbergasted ........ hence the slow drip feeds of information for Stealthy Advanced IntelAIgent Services ...... for Virtually Real Operation[s]
'Muggles' maybe, but it's the thoughtless corporate types driving A.I. with nothing but dollars in their eyes and being able to fire even the robots in H.R.
And so we end up with cars that mow down pedestrians, and probably sooner or later something much like ED 209.
We'll be lucky if there's anything vaguely in the training about not inflicting harm.
Maybe a digital readout to assure punters
'It's been XXX days since this unit caused a death. Have a Nice Day'
I don't think that's really true. The stories focus on the rare instances when things go wrong, and are seen as abnormalities against millions of robots not causing any fuss.
To say the Robot stories demonstrate the Laws work badly seems to me like saying modern medicine doesn't work all that well based on watching Dr. House's TV show.
Actually, House gives the impression modern medicine works extremely well and always comes down to a solvable logic puzzle with a dash of obscure knowledge, a bit like the Asimov stories. There's a reason: House is inspired by the Sherlock Holmes stories (House / Homes, elementary my dear Wilson), and Asimov really liked detective stories, constructing many of his short stories in that form.
You're saying Holmes didn't have an cocaine addiction and House didn't similarly have an addiction to Vicodin?
Asimov of course wasn't addicted to any chemical that we know of, and was in favour of clean living. Sadly he died of diseases associated with AIDS after he contracted HIV - something he was told to keep quiet about due to prejudice at the time.
What Asimov's laws, and the knowledge required to fully comply with them makes obvious, is that like a professional fighter, you first need to be aware of how to permanently damage your sparing partner in order that you can avoid permanently damaging your sparing partner.
Now imagine the uproar on our agreeing to an AI being taught how to kill humans, even though that knowledge is fundamental to the objective of avoiding killing humans?
The future of robotics as penned by Asimov in one of his doom laden robots gone mental sagas, is that they stop trying to mimic humans and instead focus on automated tasks like - flying around scooping up mosquitoes and gnats by the thousands. No complex AI required, just sufficient processing and robust coding to avoid freaking people out.
The stories focus on the rare instances when things go wrong, and are seen as abnormalities against millions of robots not causing any fuss.
Irrelevant to the force of Asimov's robot stories. The point isn't to explore whether the Three Rules produce an acceptable defect rate or are probabilistically "good". It's to consider a series of logic puzzles in which a system of three simple axioms is shown to produce surprising results.
In that sense the Three Laws work "poorly", for their ostensible purpose (though well for their pedagogical one), because they appear to offer simple, absolute guarantees, but it's possible to find numerous exceptions. The principle of least surprise is violated.
It's certainly possible to claim that in the world of the robot stories the Three Laws work "well" in a practical sense. That's much like Chaitin's argument that Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem was a resounding success, because Church's and Turing's proofs that it can't be solved introduced formalisms that were invaluable in spurring the development of digital computing; a mathematical "failure" (not really a failure, of course, and Chaitin doesn't characterize it as such) contributed to a major technological advance. You could say the same of the Three Laws (in their world): mapping their logical "failures" helps cement their application in technology.
But reading that as a principal theme of the stories rather goes against the interpretations most readily inferred from the text, I think. The stories are about how the Laws fail.
I don't remember that particular gardening story, but it's true that a recurring theme of Asimov's robot series was that the three laws didn't really work all that well
This. Absolutely this.
Asimov loved detective stories, the three laws gave him a framework to create all kinds of logical puzzles and paradoxes. Yes, they usually arise from situations or unusual conflicts, but they're created for fiction.
Part of the setup in most of the robotics stories is, "this couldn't possibly have happened under the three laws," which is part of the fiction and a jumping-off point for "what's gone wrong here?". None of the laws can actually be implemented with our technology as it stands because we can't create systems that are capable of assessing whether the first law is met (needed for 2 and 3). Even if we could, such judgements have to be probabilistic, which leads us into weighting and one of the very paradoxes Asimov used for a story, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaround_(story).
The first law actually supposes a total knowledge of consequences, and if you've got that, how far do you assess the chain? Readers of Terry Pratchett's Going Postal may remember Mr Pump's more comprehensive assessment of the downstream harms caused by the central character's "victimless" crimes.
Actually, the First law was broken by a R. Giskard Reventlov, A robot who self redacted his programming when he came up with the concept of the Zeroth law: that under certain circumstances it was acceptable to harm individuals if doing so would prove beneficial to society as a whole...
Asimov's books always asked the deeper questions about society vs. the individual, moral absolutism, war, idealism and societal stagnation...
Wonderful stuff...
Also worth remembering that in Asimov's books, humans never encounter any intelligent alien species, because the three laws mean that the robot pioneers that went first exterminated everything, in order to "protect" humanity. Maybe there should be a -1th law about not committing genocide on a galactic scale?
> before suggesting that they might actually be a good idea
Nonsense, we're speaking about a politician: It's never about improving peoples' lives, it's about looking like one has a firm grip on the situation and is working towards improving society (helping the weak and poor, save kittens from trees, etc.).
His PR team wanted to position him as "a guy who has solutions". Never mind the actual suggestion, the point is he made one.
This post has been deleted by its author
"The one I have trouble with is #2."
You probably ought to be suspicious of #1. Yes,it sounds excellent, but so does the equivalent rule for human beings ... and yet no legal system ever has actually imposed that rule on people. You *are* allowed to hurt people under some circumstances and you are allowed to leave people to get hurt under quite a large number of circumstances. I expect Mr Asimov was aware of this.
Asimov's "The Feeling of Power" where the rediscovery of how humans can perform mental arithmetic which had been lost due to the reliance on computers leads the military to the idea of manned missiles
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/asimov.html
"
"And I see something even beyond this. It may be fantastic now, a mere dream; but in the future I see the manned missile!"
There was an instant murmur from the audience. The general drove on. "At the present time, our chief bottleneck is the fact that missiles are limited in intelligence. The computer controlling them can only be so large, and for that reason they can meet the changing nature of anti-missile defences in an unsatisfactory way. Few missiles, if any, accomplish their goal and missle warfare is coming to a dead end; for the enemy, fortunately, as well as for ourselves.
"On the other hand, a missile with a man or two within, controlling flight by graphitics, would be lighter, more mobile, more intelligent. It would give us a lead that might well mean the margin of victory. Besides which, gentlemen, the exigencies of war compel us to remember one thing. A man is much more dispensable than a computer. Manned missiles could be launched in numbers and under circumstances that no good general would care to undertake as far as computer-directed missiles are concerned"
"
It's also worth keeping in mind the various risks of such an absolute law. A robot using these laws and intelligent enough to know these things would probably refuse to do most things on the basis that it wants to dedicate itself to preventing harm to humans, and if it isn't doing so, it is by inaction allowing them to come to harm. That would probably be a good thing for a while, but after about a week of this, the manufacturers would realize the problems in the business model of making robots who can and do decide to abandon their original tasks and try to form a volunteer harm-reduction squad. And that's only if you can find a perfect way of implementing these laws in software or hardware, if you have very clear definitions of "harm", and if the robots are capable of making the connections between possible actions and probable results. If you don't obtain perfection in any of those aspects, you have many more problems.
And don't forget RoboCop's Directive 4:
AIs will do whatever their masters direct them to do;... .... alain williams
That has AI masters ruling both the physical and geopolitical landscapes, ..... or destroying them both as the case can so easily be.
And that extraordinarily renders them heap powerful medicine, kemosabe. Or renders it so, depending on you understanding and gender choice preference for dealing with AI.
Why are you assuming it's a rubber duck? Not that I'm suggesting that flushing live ducks down the toilet on the train is the sort of thing that might happen in rural France or anything...........
However if it is meant to be une canard artificiel, it may be suggesting that the "bathroom" is not really intended for bathing.
"Not that I'm suggesting that flushing live ducks down the toilet on the train is the sort of thing that might happen in rural France or anything"
LeavesNumber 2s on the line in the UK, until 2023
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/03/uk-railway-firms-faiil-to-clean-up-waste-dumping-act
Still, best not try dispose a rubber duck...
"After tonight, I will no longer be a European citizen"
Actually, you will. You will no longer be an EU citizen.
It's the same confusion that causes the pro-EU camp to call the critics of the EU "europhobes".
I am not afraid of Europe, I deeply love Europe (including the UK).
And because I love Europe so much, I want a better EU.
And it is concerning that even the departure of the UK does not cause alarm in Brussels and makes them consider listening and changing.
If the reason for the departure of the UK was due to actual EU policies, that would have some relevance.
BoJo, and others from the Murdoch/Barclay press (let's be fair), have spent the last 20-30 years publishing outright lies about the EU though. Various anti-EU Conservatives have repeated those. Not too unreasonably, a lot of people think those lies are true because they're published in national newspapers.
As for a "better EU", it's important to remember that the EU, in its autocratic style, had the indignity to impose equal rights for older people, equal rights for gay people, equal rights for non-white people, equal rights for non-Christian people, equal rights for Christian people (in NI), equal rights for men to parental responsibility, equal rights for men to parental leave, equal rights for women pensioners, a national minimum wage... and I think I'll stop there. As those radical concepts (if you can describe "treat people properly" as that) were introduced, every Conservative party in government or opposition attempted to derail every single one. Several were opposed by the Blair/Brown governments too. The EU imposed them on the country, in direct opposition from the UK governments, because the EU considered them to be the correct thing to do. So which of those do you think shouldn't have happened? Which of those groups do you think should not have human rights?
Holocaust Remembrance Day was the other week, and one of the key peints was that people should learn how to prevent it happening again. The EU is, directly, a force to stop that happening again, because "other countries should not meddle in our internal affairs" leads *directly* to Kristallnacht, ghettos and gas chambers. It really is that simple - and the horrific part is that it's already started.
As far as I know, equal rights are guaranteed in national constitutions. No EU needed for that.
" because "other countries should not meddle in our internal affairs" leads *directly* to Kristallnacht, ghettos and gas chambers. "
Yes, I remember all the gas chambers I saw on my holidays in Iceland and Switzerland, and I hear Norway is terrible too.
But concentration camps are a British invention
Nope. Cuban, actually. Tried out by General Valeriano Weyler in an attempt to stop guerrilleros mixing with non-combatants, and considered so successful that General Roberts deployed that tactic in the Boer wars a couple of years later.
No - concentration camps as used in the Boer War were brought over from the US by a soldier who had served during the Trail of Tears where 60,000 native Americans were ethnically cleansed from their homelands to the west. For some reason the US have pushed to get it called a British invention.
No, they are cognitive dissonance sufferers who haven't noticed how much smaller is the EU bureaucracy than the equivalent staffs of all the member countries that it replaced, and how much it has actually reduced corruption.
There are plenty of ERGites that wanted out because of (a) the new opportunities for profitable corruption and (b) the creation of new Civil Service posts into which their friends and relatives can be catapulted. One imagines Private Eye will be reporting on it soon.
I really, really do not understand the mental gymnastics that lead from "Here is someone who wants an EU with more transparency and democracy (even proponents of the EU acknowledge the EU has a democratic deficit) and oh, I don't know, a budget that gets approved by the Auditing Committee for a change" to "Therefore, clearly, this person must be a racist who hates foreigners."
(I must have been so afraid at my wedding, with twelve nationalities present)
And you know what, I even think it is this attitude that caused Brexit to happen.
"And because I love Europe so much, I want a better EU."
So on balance it would probably have been better to remain and work harder to change it for the better. Leaving it is certainly not going to enable whatever flavour of 'better' you think it ought to be.
I think 25 years of trying showed that that's never going to happen.
Trying? By whom? David Owen? Margaret Thatcher? John Major? Gordon Brown? David Cameron? Theresa May? Tony Blair could be seen as pro-EU if you squint a bit a lot, but even he really wasn't.
Actually John Major was pro-EU
Very much so, and a vocal critic of Brexit.
That's one reason why he didn't give us a referendum on Maastricht, the opinion polls were showing that it would have been rejected by 60%, even the very europhile French only voted for it by 51%. A pity, without it we might have just kept a European Community and there would have been no need for Brexit.
whileI'mhere,
"So on balance it would probably have been better to remain and work harder to change it for the better."
Still, the great fallacy is repeated !!!
How does a 'single country' change the EU when it is at odds with the majority (if not *all*).
The majority of the EU members accept the EU, warts and all, as is.
There cannot be change from within by one member. Full Stop.
The infographic of what you're allowed to flush down the toilet seems to be missing two obvious things. I can see how they could (distastefully) depict one of them, but the other might be a challenge.
I can't resist the opportunity to complain about infographics in appliance instructions. Thousands of years ago, early civilisations were able to get by with pictograms, but life was simpler then, and the most sophisticated domestic appliance was a saddle quern.
Eventually, humanity progressed to its present technological zenith, largely as a result of using alphabetic writing, featuring words and numbers. Just as well, since we now have to understand how to use complicated things like a smart egg tray and a wifi connected electric kettle.
But whenever I unpack some new appliance, I have to decode the instructions from a set of badly-drawn pictures. It's like being on the receiving end of somebody trying to explain the theory of relativity through the medium of expressive dance.
"But whenever I unpack some new appliance, I have to decode the instructions from a set of badly-drawn pictures. It's like being on the receiving end of somebody trying to explain the theory of relativity through the medium of expressive dance."
Yes, because it's cheaper to give a 5 year old some crayons than to produce instructions in multiple languages. Maybe they should just produce all instruction leaflets in Esperanto and force us all to learn that? It might be easier than decoding various random scribbles.
A few years ago I bought a Phillips bathroom light. Other than the bullshit about "natural coloured light" (ghastly cheap and yellow fourescent bulb that took two minutes to get to stabilise - replaced with a nice daylight light LED), an inexplicable custom headed bolt requiring the use of the specific allen key that came with it... it came with what was genuinely a 2m x 1m sheet of health and safety crap consisting of many inexplicable symbols with apparent explanations in multiple languages, most of which didn't make sense in any language. Most of the warnings didn't even apply to the fixture in question.
"...long, difficult career in the cab, shovelling sandwiches while holding those buttons down.
Hey! I work in IT and I resemble that remark!"
Don't downplay your skills ..... sometimes you let the button go up ....... and there are so many of them (all different shapes and sizes, some with lights and some even go 'Click' !!!)
All while you 'Drink Coffee/Tea, eat sandwiches and talk on the Telephone at the same time.
You are a marvel of multitasking ........ have pride in your unique(ish) skills.
:) ;)
And you're less likely to come across koalas, kangaroos and wombats in Blighty.
Since the fires (which are ongoing in many areas, btw), you're less likely to see them in Australia also (over a billion of them have ceased to be, apparently).
Probably. I am in Portugal where the rules are similar (no-one considered changing that in 1974), and after I had my wallet with my residence card (and much more) stolen I only carry my PT driving license and take my chances, relying on white male privilege.
But in most cases the plods here are probably more lax than their French colleagues
3. An AI has the right to defend itself, unless this conflicts with the above two laws.
Not so good if the AI in question is a drone armed with sidewinder missiles which won't do what it's told, but OTOH, at some point your Windows PC will decide it's safer not to do any more bi-annual updates and ignore the Windows Update service.
An AI should protect the investment of resources associated with its continued existence and correct functioning.
i.e. They can be damned expensive.
So which human order is to be obeyed? The owner of the machine that says "do not go into the fountain" or the saboteur that orders the security guard robot to drown itself?
Mind you, see Power of the Daleks... that ended well. Not.
DOCTOR: You're my servant, are you?
DALEK: I am.
DOCTOR: Very well. Immobilise yourself. Go on.
(No response)
DOCTOR: I order it! Immediately!
(The Dalek's eye-stalk droops.)
DOCTOR: Huh!
(The Doctor leaves with Ben and Polly. The Dalek comes back to life.)
JANLEY: Lesterson.
LESTERSON: Why did you stop obeying? You were given an order.
DALEK: He has gone.
LESTERSON: Then you obey only...
DALEK (interrupting): His order was wrong. I cannot serve human beings if I am immobilised. You gave me power. Your orders are right. I serve you.
HENSELL: Lesterson. Lesterson, it reasons. Just how limited is its intelligence?
LESTERSON: Now, there is no cause for concern, Governor. Just you wait until you see the amount of work it can do. And now, I'm really going to put you through your paces. Follow me, Dalek.
DALEK: I obey.
At that point the people of Vulcan thought they were robots, and the Daleks weren't giving on that they were anything more than very sophisticated machines. Which is odd... I mean, IF the colonists thought there was a biological component to the Daleks, that what they actually had was a squid in a battle-tank, what would they have done then? Broken them up or melted them down because you can't trust organic life forms? As if the biological component has a desire for self-preservation that over-rides all else and thus makes them too dangerous?
Is it just me who find the apple core particularly disturbing? Those demonic eyes staring balefully out of the picture, daring you throw it in the bin.
I'm guessing they are a French representation of Cox's Orange Pippins, Golden Delicious are presumably happy and smiling .
"Brexit means we are at last freed to obey whatever the Americans instruct us to do."
Harsh man... harsh. It's not so much as we order you, it's just we strongly recommend, that if you want to do business here, we will be rather insistent. Think of it as speaking Python, Monty Python that is, back at you with a touch of a mafioso boss: One may not like it, but at the end of the day, we all will make money and proudly fly the bird at Europe. And at the end of the day, any chance to flip off Europe can't be all that bad now can it?
"Think of it as speaking Python, Monty Python that is, back at you"
I'm French! Why do think I have this outrageous accent, you silly king!
You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs! ---Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called Arthur-king, you and all your silly English knnnniggets. Thppppt!
I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper!...... I fart in your general direction! . Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
"part of the European Rubber Duck Mountain?"
I think that technically it is the European Rubber Duck Pool. But we have got out, picked up our towel, and will be drying ourselves off for the next 11 months while we wonder which of the now available shark-infested waters to swim in. No more rubber ducks for us!
The following sign can be seen on some UK train toilet seats...
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=south+west+trains+toilet+sign
Please don't flush
Nappies, sanitary towels,
paper towels, gum,
old phones, unpaid bills,
junk mail, your ex's sweater,
hopes, dreams or goldfish
down this
toilet
Fortunately the French still remember the Auld Alliance so us Scots are exempt from les Rosbif's ordure. If the current SNP leadership ever discover their spine and let have some sort a vote on Independence instead of expecting Boris to discover he's a democrat after all (ha!) then we can rejoin our European friends* and present Scottish passports if requested.
Mrs Muscleguy and I have on a number of occasions found ourselves a nice cafe or bistro or bar only to have it then invaded by loud, ignorant, obnoxious English people. Mme Muscleguy is English but is often forced to adopt our adopted NZ nationality to gain a measure of self respect.
Be not English in Europe if you can help it and you will get a different reaction. We have been apologised to by French people anxious to let us know l'Affair Rainbow was not in their name. We assure them we knew that, our beef too was with the then French govt and security establishment. Not that we got any help from the 'Mother Country' who sided with the French who caused an act of war (two, actually, there were two mines) in Auckland harbour.
*Some European MEPs unveiled a large sign outside the EU Parliament in the week saying they will 'leave a light on for Scotland'. Then there's the tweeted picture of a bar in Dublin with a sign saying all English patrons must be accompanied by an EU minder but not the nice Scots. If we ever get to vote Yes we shall not want for governments recognising us. Which is of course what Boris doesn't want.
Let our people go.
As I am also by times a bit Artificially Intelligent, and like to disrupt stuf (there goes the neighborhood), I was thinking along the lines of creating a Spankbot - one that necessarily causes harm (maybe there's something for Our Musky Lord Elon, there?). That also can give a nice, good and solid whipping about. As a gift for... the neighborhood. Or the downstairs neighbor, that, judging the noises emanating from the floorboards, resembles mostly caterwauling, and could do with some spanking ad infinitum. I suggest to call it the Tyrannosaurus may - the Maybot, for all intentional and unintentional (self)harm (or mayhem) - while breaking all the rules, in obedience of them (by popular vote), without any contradiction whatsoever to all and none of the above. ... I aim to please.
... There is no doubt in My mind, being the Celestial Being I am, about the intellectual qualities of those of Mister D. and His ability to think of a nice place where He can shove His rubber duck without Me telling Him, comme Adulte Responsable (with the added bonus that this ahumdum remains sfw).
I feel sorry for the AIs & Robots. Imagine constantly having to deal with inconsistent, incompetent, self-important humans, and still be polite, caring and non-violent. Do any of you think you could do that? I know I'd struggle if I couldn't blow off steam by being rude, uncaring, and occasionally violent (if pushed enough!).
I agree with Asimov's (and Daneel's) eventual conclusion that Robots & AIs actually damage humanity by making us reliant on them potentially to the point of racial
suicide. Those whose careers/incomes are dependant on AI will disagree and try to force their products on us (already happening with Google/Alexa/Siri/etc.). I have no problem with something that helps me to do what I need to do, but I do not need anything making my decisions for me. I already hate software that "tries" to be helpful, starting with "Clippy" and getting worse.
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