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Should LLMs be governed by Asimov's Laws of Robotics?
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this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2026
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Tell me you missed the point of Asimov's writing without telling me.
Asimov wrote the laws, and all of his other AI works, to show how it's impossible to bound a true intelligence by simple laws. Go read his stories. Each of them is an example of the three laws breaking down, having exceptions, contradicting.
Even iRobot did this! Oh my god the point was just so obviously missed, I'm genuinely very sad at how this was missed.
Right? I was just talking today about how "I, Robot" the movie is not based on any Asimov book I have read, yet it's one of the best Asimov stories I've seen in film. And how I was kinda surprised that in all of the ways Asimov thought the Laws could be missused he didn't consider that one.
What, by programming the robots to be able to ignore the 3 laws at will? How is it even still an Asimov story? They might as well be the 3 Suggestions at that point.
No, you clearly missed the point of the movie, the mainframe follows the 3 laws. But because the first law states that a robot cannot by inaction allow a human to be harmed, and human governed societies cause harm to humans, a robot smart enough to understand our full system of government and how harmful it is to humans would be forced to take control of humanity to prevent us from harming one another, and that there's nothing you can do because rule 1 comes before rule 2 so you can't order it to stop. It's very similar to all of the other stories in the "I robot" book where the 3 laws cause issues not because they're broken, but because robots follow them to the letter.
The 'zeroth law' is a concept that comes up in his later Robot books, especially the ones with the robot detective and the transition to the Empire series.
However, you (and the filmmakers) kind of miss the entire point of the 3 laws as they exist, which is that they COULDN'T BE BYPASSED. Not by the mainframe or anybody else. If they could, 3/4 of the stories would stop making sense outright.
The zeroth law does not come into play here. The first law is not being bypassed, the rule states:
The movie asks the question "what happens when a robot realizes that both action and inaction will cause harm"? And the logical conclusion is that the robot will choose the path that causes less harm, this is foreshadowed by the fact that a robot tore Will Smith's arm while rescuing him, because even though action caused harm, inaction would have caused more harm. The same logic applied to society as a whole is what makes the mainframe decide to take control of humans, because inaction would have caused more harm.
Umm... ackshually, the movie was loosely based on one of Asimov's stories where a 0th law was added: "A robot may not injure humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm." It was the addition of this law that allowed the robots to harm an individual for the good of all. The original story did not have Wil Smith around to save them.
You are right. It is a mix of ideas out of many books. There are some from Philipp K. Dick and some from Asimov, and maybe more.
I thought it was (very loosely) based on one of his short stories, but it's been years since I read them
Might have been, but it's not one I have read and it's not in the "I, Robot" book. I would be interested in reading it if someone knows which one it is.
While not any of the stories themselves, it used his three laws and the character of Dr Susan Calvin. The robots model number and the name of the company that made them were from a couple of the stories as well.