As Socrates, satisfied that all was well, straightened up and started to walk back toward the airlock, Representative McBurney of New York breathed a sigh of relief, and spoke for most of his colleagues when he said: “I don’t think I’d care to go to sleep for a few months, with only a robot nursemaid to look after me. Are you sure it’s safe?”
Bruno had hoped that someone would ask that.
“We’ve taken all imaginable precautions,” he answered. “Every movement that Socrates makes is monitored from outside. If anything goes wrong, we’ll push the stop button-but no one has had to do that yet. And let me show you something.”
He walked to a microphone set in the wall of the capsule, threw a switch, and ordered: “Socrates-check operating mode.”
At once the robot’s voice boomed from a speaker.
“I am on independent mode.”
Bruno turned to the visitors.
“That means he’s operating on his own, not under external command. He’s not a slave, but an individual. Now please watch this.”
He breathed a silent prayer, then ordered: “Switch all oxygen systems off-repeat, off.”
Socrates stood for a moment in an attitude of paralyzed indecision, making no attempt to move. Then, after a pause that probably lasted only a second but seemed much longer, he answered: “Order rejected. Law-one violation.”
Bruno gave a sigh of relief; the circuits weren’t foolproof yet, and he had been taking a chance.
“Continue independent program,” he said. Then he flashed a smile of satisfaction at the congressmen. “You see-he’s well trained. He knew that cutting off the oxygen would endanger his charges, and that would violate the First Law of Robotics.”
“The First Law?”
“Yes-we have them pinned up somewhere-ah, over there.”
A large and rather grimy notice, obviously the work of an amateur artist, was hanging from the wall of the lab. Printed on it were the following words:
THE LAWS OF ROBOTICS
(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 it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
(3 ) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First and Second Laws.
ISAAC ASIMOV (1920- )
Against each law was a little sketch. The First Law showed a diabolical metal monster cleaving a startled human in two with a battleaxe, while uttering the words: “Dr. Frankenstein, I presume.” The second law was illustrated by a weeping lady robot, carrying a smaller replica of herself, obediently trudging out into the snow as directed by an irate Bruno Forster. And the third sketch showed an obviously insane and partly dismantled robot in the act of committing suicide with screwdriver and monkey wrench.
When the congressmen had finished laughing at these, Bruno explained: “We haven’t got as far as the Third Law yet, and there may even be times when it’s hard to decide if an act violates Laws One or Two. Obviously, a robot policeman would have to have different instructions from a robot nurse. But on the whole, these rules are a pretty sound guide.”
“Isaac Asimov?” said Representative McBurney, “Didn’t he give evidence to our committee, a couple of years ago?”
“I’ll say he did-he was the lively old boy who wanted to build a high-pressure chemistry lab to study the life reactions that might take place on the giant planets. He got fifteen million out of us by the time he’d finished.”
As they walked back to the capsule, Representative Wilkins waved toward it and said: “I’m still not completely convinced that this sort of thing is really necessary.”
“It’s not, at the moment,” Bruno agreed. “But all our space journeys so far have been very short. Mars and Venus are only a few months away and as for the moon- why, you practically trip over it before you’ve started) Beyond Mars, though, the Solar System gets so much bigger. The journey to Jupiter takes at least a year, one way-which is why they’re still arguing about sending men there. This-” he gestured toward the space capsule-“is how we may be able to get Project Jupiter off the ground. Hibernation will open up all the planets to manned exploration. And it may do much more than that, ultimately.”
“What do you mean?” Senator Floyd, rather sharply.
“The stars, of course,” answered Bruno, warming up to one of his favorite subjects. “We’ve found no intelligent life on the other planets of our own sun, so we’ll have to look farther afield. How exciting it will be, to meet creatures wiser than us, yet perhaps using wholly different thought processes! We believe our systems of logic-and the ones we build into robots like Socrates-are universal but we can’t be sure. The answers to that, and to a lot of other questions, lie out in the stars.”
“But most of the scientists who’ve been up before our committee,” said Floyd, “believe that flight to the stars will always be impossible, because of the enormous distances. They say that any trip, with propulsion systems that we can imagine, will take thousands of years.”
“What if it does?” answered Bruno. “The solution’s right here. We’re not sure if simple hibernation stops the aging process, but we’re fairly certain that deep-freezing does-and there are groups working on that, at Bethesda and San Antonio. I can imagine a ship starting on a ten- thousand-year voyage, with robots like Socrates in charge until the time comes to thaw out the crew.”
Senator Floyd seemed to be thinking this over; he appeared to have forgotten the demonstration that had been so carefully arranged for his benefit. For the first time Bruno realized that the Senator, whom he knew rather well, had been very preoccupied during his visit to the lab; he was not his usual inquisitive self. Or he had not been until this moment; now something seemed to have triggered him off.
“Let me get this straight,” he continued. “You think that flight to the stars-not just to the planets-is possible, and that robots could be built that would operate for thousands of years?”
“Certainly.”
“What about-millions of years?”
That’s a damned odd question, thought Bruno, what the devil is the old boy driving at?
“I certainly wouldn’t guarantee a million-year robot with our present materials and technologies,” he answered cautiously. “But I can imagine a virtually immortal automaton, if its thinking circuits were properly encapsulated. A crystal-a diamond, for example-lasts a long, long time; and we’ve already started building memories into crystals.”
“This is all very fascinating,” interrupted Representative McBurney of New York, “but I’m not a robot, and it’s past lunchtime.” He pointed to Socrates, who had now emerged from the capsule and, his programmed demonstration completed, stood waiting further orders. “He may be satisfied with a few minutes plugged into a wall socket, but I want something more substantial.”
“Eating food,” said Bruno with a grin, “is a terribly inefficient and messy way of acquiring energy. Some of my friends in Biotechnology are trying to bypass it.”
“Thanks for warning us-that’s one project we won’t support. I prefer the human body the way it is; and while we’re on the subject, we do have another fundamental advantage over robots.”
“And what’s that?”
“We can be manufactured by unskilled labor.”
Bruno dutifully joined in the laughter, though he had heard that particular joke a hundred times before and was just a little tired of it. Besides, what did it prove?
To Bruno, as to many of his colleagues, the machines with which he was working were a new species, free from the limitations, taints, and stresses of organic evolution. They were still primitive, but they would learn. Already they could handle problems of a complexity far beyond the scope of the human brain. Soon they would be designing their own successors, striving for goals which Homo sapiens might never comprehend.
Yes, it was true that-for a while-men would be able to outbreed robots, but far more important was the fact that one day robots would outthink men.
When that day came, Bruno hoped that they would still be on good terms with their creators.
FROM THE OCEAN, FROM THE STARS
Four thousand miles above the surface of Mars, experimental spacecraft Polaris 1-XE rested at the end of her maiden voyage. Her delicate, spindle-shaped body with its great radiating surfaces and ring of low-thrust ion engines would be torn to pieces by air resistance if she ever entered an atmosphere. She was a creature of deep space, and had been built in orbit around Earth; now she was as near to any world as she would ever be, suspended by a network of flimsy cables between two jagged peaks of Phobos, the inner satellite of Mars. On this fifteen-mile diameter ball of rock, the ship weighed only a few hundred pounds; for all practical purposes she and her crew were still in free orbit. Gravity here was little more than a thousandth of Earth’s.