Final Exam Post #2 Reply

Original: Reason
I found it interesting in class when we were talking about how robots use to be portrayed. We were told that historically in science fiction stories robots were created by a "mad scientist" and then they would go "haywire." After this they would put human life at some sort of major risk and then humans would figure out a way to prevent it and defeat the robot.

In the story "Reason" this concept is sort of follows suit, but has a different twist. The guys put together the robot Cutie and then he stops listening to their commands. They think that he is putting the humans on earth at risk. Instead of figuring out a way to defeat him or gain his control Cutie has his way. In the end the robot actually did a better job maintaining the beam through the storm than the humans could have.

I'm not sure that in this story Cutie was programmed with the three laws. Not because he stopped obeying them and locked them out of the control room and engine room. He was following the first law by better protecting the humans on earth by controlling the beam himself. However, he told the humans several times that they were no longer of use and they would come to their end soon. What exactly did he mean by that? Were his intentions to terminate them himself?

New: Reason
The reason that stories were originally told this way is, because we need to at least think about these sorts of things. Because as mentioned we are unsure what Cutie’s intentions are with to do with the human crew since he considers them to be useless. If robots with super strength found us useless purely based on reason isn’t it plausible that they might wipe us out? I mention the robots as plurals, because once Cutie stopped obeying the human commands he manipulated the rest of the robots to also stop listening.

While it is true that Cutie actually did a better job than the human crew there was no certainty of that. As mentioned in the above paragraph what if reason led him to believe humans were a complete waste and needed to be destroyed. Remember he hasn’t been to earth. What if he discovers how humans treat earth? He wouldn’t even need a robot army. He could intentionally improperly guide the beam and destroy the humans.

As we saw in Bicentennial Man Andrew slowly started to manipulate the three laws. It doesn’t really matter if the three laws are programmed into him or not if he can come up with any justifiable reason to manipulate them. The problem is that the robot works purely off of reason. In stories like Gulliver’s Travel Part 4 by Jonathon Swift in which the houyhnhnms(the horses) represent reason we see how acting purely reasonable can turn out to be not so reasonable at all. Cutie does not know of the God we know and therefore does not find human life to be sacred. By not finding it sacred there is no reasonable explanation to preserve it. If programmed with the robot laws that is all he knows and it’s just a program that can be manipulated.