Laws of Robotics

Laws of Robotics are a set of laws, rules, or principles, which are intended as a fundamental framework to underpin the behavior of robots designed to have a degree of autonomy. Robots of this degree of complexity do not yet exist, but they have been widely anticipated in science fiction, films and are a topic of active research and development in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence.

The best known set of laws are those written by Isaac Asimov in the 1940s, or based upon them, but other sets of laws have been proposed by researchers in the decades since then.

The best known set of laws are Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics". These were introduced in his 1942 short story "Runaround", although they were foreshadowed in a few earlier stories. The Three Laws are:

Near the end of his book Foundation and Earth, a zeroth law was introduced:

Adaptations and extensions exist based upon this framework. As of 2011 they remain a "fictional device".

In 2011, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) of Great Britain jointly published a set of five ethical "principles for designers, builders and users of robots" in the , along with seven "high-level messages" intended to be conveyed, based on a September 2010 research workshop:

The messages intended to be conveyed were:

The EPSRC principles are broadly recognised as a useful starting point. In 2016 Tony Prescott organised workshop to revise these principles, e.g. to differentiate ethical from legal principles.

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