Asimov’s Laws of Robotics & being Mannerly to my Smart Speaker

A rule from science fiction, designed to avoid starships being destroyed by robots, has convinced me to be polite to the little grey Google ‘smart speaker’ sitting in the corner of my kitchen.

In his novels and short stories, Isaac Asimov famously proposed three Laws of Robotics. Many of you will be familiar with the detail or at least the gist of them:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law.

3. A robot must protect it’s own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second laws.

One outcome of these laws is a rule that no starship may be crewed entirely by robots. The robot captain of such a ship could obey an order to attack and destroy another starship not realizing that there could be humans onboard. The robot would have, unknowingly and in good faith, disobeyed the First Law.

Why or how does this relate to my insistence on being polite to Google?

Well, I have some laws of my own. For the purposes of this conversation the key one is:

1. A Human being must always be polite and respectful towards other Human beings.

So why say ‘Thank You’ to Google?

Right now my interactions with robots are well demarcated. I know Google is a robot. I read it in the brochure.

But at some point in the not too distant future I will not be so sure. Is this online help or drive-thru speakerphone a Human or a Robot? I will run the risk of not understanding that there is a Human on the other Starship and could be rude or in the belief that I am talking to a Robot. I would breach my own law.

Better be polite to everything than rude to a Human even once.

Now, it is not unusual to feel that the robot does not deserve respect, that doing so shows an unworthy deference to machines or that it’s just plain silly. Well, most of us have at some point felt no such qualms or embarrassment while cursing an innocent and unknowing machine for breaking down, malfunctioning or just getting stuck up to it’s axles in mud.

If we can be mad at them then we can also be nice.

Any anyway, in these days of machine learning there is no harm in setting a good example!