Zeroth Law of Robotics

The Three Laws of Robotics (often shortened to The Three Laws or Asimov's Laws) are a set of rules devised by science fiction author Isaac Asimov, which were to be followed by robots in several of his stories. The rules were introduced in his 1942 short story " Runaround" (included in the 1950 collection ''I, Robot''), although similar restrictions had been implied in earlier stories.

The Laws

The Three Laws, presented to be from the fictional "Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.", are:
# A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
# A robot must obey the orders by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
# A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Use in fiction

The Three Laws form an organizing principle and unifying theme for Asimov's robot-based fiction, appearing in his ''Robot'' series, the stories linked to it, and in his (initially pseudonymous) Lucky Starr series of young-adult fiction. The Laws are incorporated into almost all of the positronic robots appearing in his fiction, and cannot be bypassed, being intended as a safety feature. A number of Asimov's robot-focused stories involve robots behaving in unusual and counter-intuitive ways as an unintended consequence of how the robot applies the Three Laws to the situation in which it finds itself. Other authors working in Asimov's fictional universe have adopted them and references, often parodic, appear throughout science fiction as well as in other genres.

The original laws have been altered and elaborated on by Asimov and other authors. Asimov himself made slight modifications to the first three in subsequent works to further develop how robots would interact with humans and each other. In later fiction where robots had taken responsibility for government of whole planets and human civilizations, Asimov also added a fourth, or zeroth law, to precede the others.

The Three Laws, and the Zeroth, have pervaded science fiction and are referred to in multiple books, films, and other media. They have also influenced thought on the ethics of artificial intelligence.

History

In ''The Rest of the Robots'', published in 1964, Isaac Asimov noted that when he began writing in 1940 he felt that "one of the stock plots of science fiction was ... robots were created and destroyed their creator. Knowledge has its dangers, yes, but is the response to be a retreat from knowledge? Or is knowledge to be used as itself a barrier to the dangers it brings?" He decided that in his stories a robot would not "turn stupidly on his creator for no purpose but to demonstrate, for one more weary time, the crime and punishment of Faust."

On May 3, 1939, Asimov attended a meeting of the Queens (New York) Science Fiction Society where he met Earl and Otto Binder who had recently published a short story "I, Robot" featuring a sympathetic robot named Adam Link who was misunderstood and motivated by love and honor. (This was the first of a series of ten stories; the next year "Adam Link's Vengeance" (1940) featured Adam thinking "A robot must never kill a human, of his own free will.") Asimov admired the story. Three days later Asimov began writing "my own story of a sympathetic and noble robot", his 14th story. Thirteen days later he took "Robbie" to John W. Campbell the editor of '' Astounding Science-Fiction''. Campbell rejected it, claiming that it bore too strong a resemblance to Lester del Rey's "Helen O'Loy", published in December 1938—the story of a robot that is so much like a person that she falls in love with her creator and becomes his ideal wife. Frederik Pohl published the story under the title “Strange Playfellow” in ''Super Science Stories'' September 1940.

Asimov attributes the Three Laws to John W. Campbell, from a conversation that took place on 23 December 1940. Campbell claimed that Asimov had the Three Laws already in his mind and that they simply needed to be stated explicitly. Several years later Asimov's friend Randall Garrett