Why Asimov’s Addendum?

Back in the 1940s, Isaac Asimov imagined a society of humans and intelligent robots.  “The Three Laws of Robotics” guided the safe and ethical behavior of robots, and gave Asimov ample opportunity to explore the many ambiguities in the laws and the difficulty of putting them into practice. More recently, Stuart Russell, UC Berkeley professor and leading AI researcher, proposed to develop “Human-compatible AI” by following a very different set of three principles. Yet the challenge of aligning AI with the best interests of society is only just getting started.

In this newsletter, we consider what additional “laws” might be needed to ensure that AI can be aligned with the public good, now that corporate objectives and the market’s incentives have become dominant steering factors in AI’s development.

This newsletter runs parallel to our research housed at the Social Science Research Council, though it is not affiliated with it.

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Thank you!

Tim O’Reilly and Ilan Strauss

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