The Three Laws of Robotics in Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot were designed so that robots and humans may live peacefully side by side. Also, these laws were designed so that robots may be used as a tool to the human race and that they, humans, would never need fear having a robot around. Robots have no free will of their own. They are programmed with the Three Laws and can not follow any other command should it violate any of those three. The first and strongest law strictly prohibits any robot from harming a human or allowing harm to come to a human. Also, these robots can not act on their own outside the will and parameters set by the humans. Therefore it would appear that they would pose no threat to humans. Unfortunately, as we can see in the book, this does not add up to make a utopian society.
First of all, though robots are programmed to obey the three laws, there are, as with all machines, anomalies; malfunctions, if you will. These malfunctioning robots, either through a lessening or twisting of the first law, may cause harm to a human being. This is possible in that their “logic” has become twisted and they therefore think that they are actually following the three laws when in reality they are not. Even still, if there were no “anomalies” or malfunctioning robots, there still would be no utopia because humans are still are odds with and in danger of being harmed by other humans. Though we humans are like, more than we would admit, the robots in I, Robot, in as much as we can almost have a perfect society were we to follow the Three Laws of Robotics, we have not attained this perfection because despite being like the robots in many ways, we have some very major differences.
Our government was designed to protect the rights and liberties of the governed and in the course of doing so it created laws, not unlike the three laws, by which we are governed. However, because of free will, we must also have warnings and punishments. Robots do not need such things because the three laws are programmed in at “birth.” Humans, on the other hand, having free will, need this system of warnings and punishments to help dissuade them from using their will to break the law. These laws and warnings, however, are not “programmed” into us on the day of our “creation.” We learn these laws as we grow and we are “conditioned” to accept these laws as that which will keep us safe from harm and that which will harm us should we break them (humans have a very high degree and sense of self-preservation). While most humans follow this conditioning throughout the course of their lives, we still have, like the robots, “malfunctioning” members of society, or criminals. Through human free will, these criminals can break the laws of government, even to the point of injuring and killing another human being. Therefore another difference between humans and robots is that we find ourselves in need of a “force” that will protect us from these “malfunctions.” The forces that we need consist of two types: law enforcement and the military. Though these two types have different areas of responsibility, they function the same in regards to the execution of laws laid down by the government.
Now, there are three types of humans. Those who are “normal”, which we will call “sheep”, as in they obey the laws set down by the government and go quietly about their lives. Another type is the malfunctioning human, one with psycho-sociopathic tendencies, which we will call the “wolf”. This human has no regard for government’s laws or the sheep that follow them. It will break the first law over and over again without remorse until it is stopped. The third kind of human only makes up approximately three percent of humans. These humans have what is called aggressive psychopathic tendencies and are who we will call “sheepdogs”. These humans, while not ever harming a sheep, will not think twice about injuring or killing a wolf, especially when other sheep are involved. The third type of human is that which is needed for the law enforcement and military. The reason the sheepdog is preferred is that it already has the tendencies needed to be successful in such a “force”. Law enforcement and military personnel need to be reconditioned so that they know for whom and when they are allowed to break the first law. Sheepdogs, simply by nature of their psychopathic tendencies, already have a potential for this type of conditioning. They already know that they must protect themselves and the other sheep, since the sheep won’t protect themselves, and that they must seek out and contain or destroy the wolf. In a sense, you must teach these humans wisdom, a faculty not available to robots. A robot may reason but, just like his actions being controlled by parameters, the extent of his reasoning is limited by his programming and what information he is fed. A robot is a logical machine that only deals with hard facts while the human is a logical and reasoning being that can also deal with a wide range of illogical and emotional facts.
Therefore, though we humans are akin to robots, our differences are so vast that we can not completely function as a society based on the same Three Laws of Robotics that the robots must obey. Both societies start out with the same premise, that there must be laws to govern and protect the people, but we must go about it in very different ways. The very things that set us apart from the robots, our free will and ability to deal with and reconcile ourselves to impossibilities cause us to govern ourselves in such a way that there can never be a perfect state. But then again, as is always said, what can be perfect when you are dealing with humans?
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