"Randall Garrett - His Master's Voice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Garrett Randall)

For more than a Century, robotocists have been trying to build Asimov's famous Three Laws of
Robotics into a robot brain.

First Law: A robot shall not, either through action or inaction, allow harm to come to a human
being.

Second Law: A robot shall obey the orders of a human being, except when such orders conflict
with the First Law.

Third Law: A robot shall strive to protect its own existence, except when this conflicts with the
First or Second Law.

Nobody has succeeded yet, because nobody has yet succeeded in defining the term "human being" in
socfe a way that the logical mind of a robot can encompass the concept.

A traffic robot is useful only because the definition has been rigidly narrowed down. As far as a traffic
robot is concerned, "human beings" are the automobiles on its highways. Woe betide any poor sap who
tries, illegally, to cross a robot-controlled highway on foot. The robot's only concern would be with the
safety of the automobiles, and if the only way to avoid destruction of an automobile were to be by
nudging the pedestrian aside with a fender, that's what would happen.

And, since its orders only come from one place, I suppose that a traffic robot thinks that the guy who
uses that typer is an automobile.

With the first six models of the McGuire ships, the robotocists attempted to build in the Three Laws
exactly as stated. And the first six went insane.

If one human being says "jump left," and another says "jump right," the robot is unable to evaluate
which human being has given the more valid orler. Feed enough conflicting data into a robot brain, and it
can begin behaving in ways that, in a human being, would be called paranoia or schizophrenia or
catatonia or what-have-you, depending on the symptoms. And an insane robot is fully as dangerous as an
insane human being controlling the same mechanical equipment, if not more so.

So the seventh model had been modified. The present McGuire's brain was impressed with slight
modifications of the First and Second Laws.

If it is difficult to define a human being, it is much more difficult to define a responsible human being.
One, in other words, who can be relied upon to give wise and proper orders to a robot, who can be
relied upon not to drive the robot insane.

The robotocists at Viking Spacecraft had decided to take another tack. "Very well," they'd said, "if
we can't define all the members of a group, we can certainly define an individual. We'll pick one
responsible person and build McGuire so that be will take orders only from that person."

As it torned out, I was that person. Just substitute "Daniel Oak" for "human being" in the First and
Second Laws, and you'll see how important I was to a certain spaceship named McGuire.


When I finally caught the beam from Ceres and set my flitterboat down on the huge landing field that