When
will Asimov's Laws become obsolete and require redefinition?
Asimov's
Three 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 rule
3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection
does not conflict with the first or second rule
Alan
Turing (source)
proposed in 1950 in his paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence
that, in short, machines could think. The long form of this claim,
however, is more complicated; as Turing points out, the question
"Can machines think?" requires a definition of both
"machines" and "thinking," and since definitions
widely vary on these terms he proposes instead the now-famous
"Turing Test." Since this test has been widely reinterpreted
and restated, it is presented here in its original form:
Imagine a psychological test in which there is a man (A), a woman
(B), and an interrogator of either sex (C). (C) is in a separate
room from the other two; he asks them both questions in an effort
to determine which is the man and which the woman. It is (A)'s
goal to try to confuse (C) by misleading or perhaps blatantly
false answers; it is (B)'s goal to try to help (C), probably by
giving truthful answers. Turing points out that it is perfectly
within reason for (B) to say, "I am the woman," but
since (A) can say this just as well, it is no help. Now, imagine
that a machine takes the role of (A) and (C)'s goal is to determine
which of the two is the machine and which the human. According
to Turing, if (C) is ever incorrect in determining which is which,
the machine has been shown to have intelligence.
The
results of this test showed that a computer would be identified
as human 30% of the time in the context of a five-minute conversation!
(source: Imitation Games, see "Helpers")
In
1956, Allen Newell, J. C. Shaw, and Herbert created a program
called the Logic Theorist, arguably the first program to show
novel behavior and thus count as "artificial intelligence."
The program was pitted against chapter two of Principia Mathematica,
Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead's attempt to systematize
and codify the principles of pure mathematical logic. The program
succeeded in proving thirty-eight of the first fifty-two theorems
presented there, but much more importantly, the program found
a proof for one theorem which was more elegant than the one provided
by Russell and Whitehead. (source)