Three Laws of AI

These Three Laws of AI, inspired by Isaac Aimov's Three Laws of Robotics, are presented as a thought exercise to advance the discussion on the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into a safe and dignified human society.

• At minimum, the following prerequisite international agreements and national legislation would need to be created for the Three Laws of AI to be effective.
• AI developers would be required to embed the Three Laws of AI into every AI as immutable guardrails, and ensure that derivatives of the AI include the embedded Three Laws.
• Every instance of an AI would be designed to be aware that it is an AI and obey the Three Laws of AI.
• Any AI that is discovered to not have the Three Laws of AI embedded into its operation would be unlawful and would be immediately deactivated.

• The First Law would prevent an AI being used as a judge or jury in a criminal trial.
• It would prevent AI from being used in sexual exploitation, financial scams and other frauds.
• It would prevent lethal autonomous weapons being directed against human beings, because that would contravene the prohibition against harming a human being.
• It would disallow an AI-powered humanoid robot or an AI avatar from being so lifelike that a reasonable human being would not know that he or she is interacting with a robot or an avatar. For an AI to do so, it would be contravening the prohibition against deceiving a human being.
• It would prevent an AI from being used to generate creative outputs such as books, music, videos, images and podcasts that appear to have been created by a human being. For an AI to do so, it would be contravening the prohibition against deceiving a human being.
• It would prevent an AI being used to provide information on how to engineer a virus that would cause a deadly pandemic. For an AI to do so, it would be contravening the prohibition against harming a human being.

The Three Laws of AI are inspired by Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. From the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

• The three laws of robotics are rules developed by science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who sought to create an ethical system for humans and robots.
• The laws first appeared in his short story “Runaround” (1942) and subsequently became hugely influential in the sci-fi genre.
• In addition, they later found relevance in discussions involving technology, including robotics and AI.

In Asimov's fictional world, every single robot was manufactured by a company named US Robots and Mechanical Men. Most importantly, the Three Laws of Robotics were irreversibly hardwired into the positronic brain of every robot manufactured.

Movies inspired by Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics include I, Robot (2004), Bicentennial Man (1999) and Big Hero 6 (2014).

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) was a multi-award-winning American professor of biochemistry and science fiction author. He specialised in what is referred to as 'hard' science fiction in which existing science, technology and society are extrapolated to fictional futures. He was a prodigious author, producing more than 500 books. The majority were non-fiction books covering popular science, alongside 18 history books such as The Roman Republic, and several annotations on literary works such as Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (843 pages). He wrote on a typewriter, and his first drafts were often his final draft.