Norbert Weiner and the Three Laws of Robotics

They might be giants. Hell, they might be enormous walking lobsters with immense appetites for goulash and pincers powerful enough to seperate Bush from office. Who cares what they are? We might be robots. I don't mean that we're going to be turned into machines; I mean what Norbert warned us about:

[The] automatic machine ... operates as the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor. (Norbert Weiner, Human Use of Human Beings, 1954)

OK, maybe there's a threat that might make us, at least metaphorically, slaves. How does that relate to robots? According to the very helpful site Roger Clarke's Asimov's Laws of Robotics,

The term robot derives from the Czech word robota, meaning forced work or compulsory service, or robotnik, meaning serf. It was first used by the Czech playwright Karel Çapek in 1918 in a short story and again in his 1921 play R. U. R., which stood for Rossum's Universal Robots. Rossum, a fictional Englishman, used biological methods to invent and mass-produce "men" to serve humans. Eventually they rebelled, became the dominant race, and wiped out humanity.

There is a difference between a slave and a serf. The slave is property, and can be disposed of as his or her owner pleases. The slave typically has no rights, not even a right to life (although this varies with the particular slave system). The serf is not property, but he or she is not free, either. The serf is bound to the land, and the land is bound to a hierarchy of lords. The serf has no formal rights, but the lords are bound at least by custom to protect (from bandits and other lords) him or her, and treat him or her with a certain minimum level of respect.

This reminds me of the Autstrian economist Frierich Hayek and his very popular book The Road to Serfdom. According to Hayek, when we allow a state (government) to do stuff for us, like provide health care or income support, we surrender our liberties to bureaucrats. By allowing others to make choices for us (e.g., whether we can see a specialist or not), we turn ourselves into serfs, unfree people. We can only truly be free when we make our own choices, and we make our choices through the market. We buy the healthcare we want; we don't have imposed on us by HMO ... oops! I mean government bureaucrats. To be served by the state is in fact to be coerced by the state, and coercion is the opposite of liberty. Of course, you have to have money to make your choices through the market; the penniless are as free as Bobby McGee -- "freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."

I'll eventually figure out where Hayek fits in all this. But for now, let's talk about Asimov's three laws of robotics. First presented in the short story "Runaround" published in 1942, Asimov's laws are:

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 orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
   
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
   

What happens when you replace human being with employer and robot with robotnik? Think about it, and I'll be back.