Asimov's Laws in Today's AI

ChatGPT and Other Generative AIs Graded

Isaac Asimov had a singular mind.

He was one of the most prolific, curious, and influential sci-fi writers of all time. He wrote more than 500 books, and he pretty much never took a break from writing or reading.

Isaac Asimov as a black and white sketch

This isn’t the first time I’ve used his ideas as a parable, and it probably won’t be the last.

In the grand tapestry of science fiction, few concepts have had as lasting and profound an impact as Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. Originally proposed in his 1942 short story "Runaround," these laws were intended as a set of fundamental directives built into the “positronic brains” of robots to ensure the safety of humans and the ethical conduct of artificial beings.

Today, we have a different sort of “robotics” than Asimov may have had in mind when he came up with his 3 Laws. Artificial Intelligence is far from science fiction today, so it seems prudent to examine how today's generative AI, especially Learning Language Models (LLMs) are adher…