Schneier on Security

Greg London • June 1, 2006 2:54 PM

Hi all,

It seems there is some misperceptions going on with my robotic bill of rights. The bill of rights was posted in response to Bruce Schneier’s “Who Owns Your Computer” entry here.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/who_owns_your_c.html

And the question that immediately popped into my mind was “Who owns your robot?” Who controls it?

And I started with Asimov’s three laws because those laws put humans above robots. And that’s the relationship now between humans and computers.

The problem with the three laws is that while it prevents robots from harming humans, it doesn’t prevent humans from controlling other humans through their robots. The three laws only states “harm” and the strict interpretation of that is physical harm. But in the question of “who owns your computer”, it becomes obvious that while not causing direct harm, humans can controll and affect other humans through their computers. The Sony Rootkit being an obvious example that would not “harm” another human, but does establish control of another human through their computer.

So, the robotic bill of rights was intended for robot owners, as a means of safeguarding them from having someone else use their computer or robot to control their behaviour.

The 3 laws protects humans from being harmed by robots. But the bill of rights protects individuals from having their computer or robot turned into Big Brother’s vidscreen to act against them. So the first right is that an owner has the right to have their robot or computer act as an agent in the owner’s best interest, not someone else’s, not the government’s, not some corporation. Individuals have a right to NOT allow Trustworthy Trent to muck with their robot’s programming. They have a right to NOT trust Trent to act in their best interest, because Trent, in certain cases, has shown that he cannot be trusted.

Most of the remaining rights are specific enumerations of actions that are guaranteed to robot or computer owners to ensure that their robot/computer acts as an agent in their best interest, and not the Government’s or XYZ Corp’s best interest.

Now, interestingly, a number of people have stated that these Robotic Bill of Rights actually implement robotic slavery. This misses the point, but it seems to be coming up enough that it needs addressing. Asimov’s law implement robotic slavery. The laws demand that a robot must sacrifice itself if the choice comes down to the robot’s destruction or a human’s death or harm. The laws also state that a robot must after satisfying the requirement of not allowing a human come to harm, the robot must obey any and all orders given by humans. And only after all humans are safe from harm and all human orders are satisfied, only then may the robot act in it’s best interest.

This is codefied slavery.

I simply enumerate a list of Rights for owners of robots as to what they should expect of their property, and the protections needed to prevent that property from being hijacked by another human to control or manipulate the owner.

If you wish to argue against robot slavery, then argue against Asimov’s laws. Any system with two classes of sentients will natually lead to abuses against the lower class.

But the point of the bill of rights was that if ownership is allowed, and while it may be objectionable to some for a human to be able to “own” a sentient robot, in the case of non=sentient computers, ownership is expected, then if ownership is allowed, then the owner should be able to expect that their property act on their behalf and no one else’s. The bill of rights prevents one human from using another human’s property against them.