Asimov’s Future History Volume 11

by Isaac Asimov

  “A final point: Until the era of the Spacers, robots were a vanishingly rare and expensive commodity. Today we think nothing of a Spacer culture where robots outnumber humans fifty or a hundred to one. For the first few hundred years of their use, robots were about a thousand times less numerous than humans. That which is rare is treated differently from that which is common. A man who owned a single robot, one that cost more than all his other worldly possessions combined, would never dream of using that robot as a boat anchor.

  “These, then, were the cultural elements that drove the creation of the Three Laws. A folk myth of a soulless, fearful monster built from the undead; the sense of a threatening world out of control; the deep resentment against machines that were robbing the bread from the mouths of poor families; the fact of robotic scarcity and their perception as being rare and valuable. Note that I am concerned mostly with perceptions here, and not so much with reality. What mattered is how people saw robots, not what the robots were like. And these people saw robots as marauding monsters.”

  Fredda took a breath and looked out across the room to see the audience dead silent, listening in shocked horror to her words. She went on. “It has been said that we Spacers are a sick society, slaves to our own robots. Similar charges have been leveled at our Settler friends who huddle in their underground warrens, hiding from the world outside, assuring themselves it is much nicer to live out of sight of the sky. They are the cultural inheritors of the fear-built Cities of Earth. These two views are often presented as being mutually exclusive. One culture is sick, therefore the other is healthy. I would suggest it is more reasonable to judge the health or sickness of each independently. To my mind, the health of both is in grave doubt.

  “In any event, it is clear that the society, the time period, into which robots and the Three Laws were built was far sicker than ours. Paranoid, distrustful, twisted by violent wars and horrifying emotion, the Earth of that time was a fearful place indeed. It was that sickness that our ancestors fled when they left Earth. It was the wish to dissociate themselves from that sickness that caused us Spacers to reject, for so long, our actual decendancy from Earth. For thousands of years, we denied our common heritage with Earth and the Settlers, dismissing those outside our Fifty Worlds as subhuman, poisoning relations between our two peoples. In short, it is the sickness of that long-forgotten time that is at the core of the distrust and hatred between Settler and Spacer today. The illness has survived the culture that created it.

  “I have said that all human inventions are reflections of the times in which they were created. If that is so, the Three Laws are reflected from a dark mirror indeed. They reflect a time when machines were feared and distrusted, when technology was correctly perceived as often malevolent, when a gain made by a machine could come only at the cost of a loss to a human, when even the richest man was poor by the standards of our time, and the poor were deeply – and understandably – resentful of the rich. I have said and will say many negative things about our robot-based culture tonight, but there are many bright and shining positives as well. We have lost not only the fact of poverty but the ability to conceive of it. We are not afraid of each other, and our machines serve us, not we the machines. We have built many great and lovely things.

  “Yet our entire world, our whole culture, is built around Three Laws that were written in a time of savagery. Their form and phrasing are as they are in part to placate the fearful, semibarbaric masses of that time. They were, I submit, even at the time of their invention, an overreaction to the circumstances. Today they are almost completely detached from present reality.

  “So: What are robots for? In the beginning, of course, the answer was simple. They were for doing work. But today, as a result of those Three Laws written so long ago, the original uses for robots have almost become subordinate to the task of cocooning and coddling humanity.

  “That was clearly not the intent of the people who wrote those Three Laws. But each Law has developed its own subtext over time, formed a set of implications that became evident only after robots and humans lived together for a long time – and these implications become difficult to see from within a society that has had a long association with robots.

  “Let us step back and look at the Laws, starting with the First Law of Robotics: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. This is of course perfectly reasonable – or so we tell each other. Since robots are very much stronger than human beings, robots must be forbidden to use that strength against humans. This is analogous to our own human-to-human prohibitions against violence. It prevents one human from using a robot as a weapon against another, by, for example, ordering a robot to kill an enemy. It makes robots utterly trustworthy.

  “But this Law also defines any robot’s existence as secondary to any human’s. This made more sense in an age when robots were incapable of speech or complex reasoning, but all modem robots are at least that capable. It made sense in a day when the poor were many and robots were expensive and few. Otherwise, the rich might easily have ordered their playthings to defend themselves against the mob, with disastrous results. Yet, still, today, in all times, in all places, the existence of the noblest, bravest, wisest, strongest robot is as nothing when compared to the life of the most despicable, monstrous, murderous criminal.

  “The second clause of the First Law further means that in the presence of robots humans do not need to protect themselves. If I pull a gun on Sheriff Kresh in the front row here, he knows that he need do nothing.” For a weird, fleeting second, Fredda considered just how pleasant it would be to do just that. Kresh was a threat. There was no doubt about that. “His personal robot, Donald, would protect him. Ariel, the robot on the stage behind me, would disarm me. In a very real sense, Sheriff Kresh would have no responsibility to keep himself alive. If he climbed a mountain, I doubt that Donald would allow him to make the ascent without five or six robots along, climbing ahead of him and behind him, ready at all times to prevent him from falling. A robot would urgently attempt to talk its master out of such a dangerous activity in the first place.

  “The fact that such overprotection takes all of the fun out of mountain climbing explains at least in part why none of us go mountain climbing anymore.,

  “In similar, if more subtle fashion, living with robots has trained us to regard all risk as bad, and all risk as equal. Because robots must protect us from harm, and must not, through inaction, allow us to come to harm, they struggle endlessly to watch for any danger, no matter how slight, for that is what we have told them to do.

  “It is barely an exaggeration to say that robots protect against a million-to-one danger of minor injury with every bit as much fervor as they guard against the risk of near-certain death. Because minor and major risks are treated the same, we come to think that they are the same. We lose our ability to judge risk against possible benefit. I am sure that every person in the audience tonight has had the experience of a robot leaping in to protect against absolutely trivial risks and dangers. Robots overreact, and in doing so teach us to fear risk inordinately. On a cultural level, that fear of risk has spread over from the merely physical to the psychological. Daring and chance-taking are seen as at the very least distasteful and unseemly, not the done thing. At every turn, our culture teaches us it is foolish to take chances, however small.

  “It is, however, a truism that all things that are worth gaining require some risk in the effort to get them. When a climber goes to the top of a mountain to see the view, there is the risk of falling off, ever present, no matter how many robots are along. When a scientist strives to learn something new, the risks include loss of face, loss of resources, loss of time. When one person offers true love to another, there is the danger of rejection. In all things, in all efforts, this element of risk is there to be found.

  “But our robots teach us that risk, every risk, all risk, is bad. It is their duty to protect us from harm, not their task to do us g
ood. There is no law saying A robot shall help a human achieve his or her dreams. Robots, by their caution, train us to think only of safety. They are concerned with the dangers, not with the potential benefits. Their overprotective behavior and their constant urgings that we be cautious teach us at a very early age that it is wiser not to take chances. No one in our society ever takes risks. Thus, the chance for success is eliminated right along with the chance for failure.”

  By now the silence in the room was gone altogether, replaced by a low, angry, buzzing hum. People were talking with their neighbors, shaking their heads, frowning. There was a disturbing intensity in the air.

  Fredda paused and looked about the auditorium. It suddenly seemed to her that the room had grown smaller. The rear seats had moved in, and were remarkably close to her. The people in the front rows seemed to be only a few centimeters away from her face.

  She looked down at Alvar Kresh. He seemed so close that it would take an effort of will to avoid touching him. The air seemed bright and charged with energy, and the straight lines and careful geometry of the room seemed to have curved in on themselves. All the colors in the room seemed richer, the lights brighter.

  Fredda felt her heart thumping against her chest. The emotions in the room, the anger, the excitement, the curiosity, the confusion, were all palpable things, there for her to reach out and touch. She had them! Oh, she knew there was little hope of mass conversions on the spot – and she did not even know what she would want them all converted to – but she had caught their emotions, forced them to look at their own assumptions. She had opened the debate.

  Now if she could only finish out the evening without starting a riot. She glanced down at her notes and started back into her talk.

  “We fear risk, and look at the results. In every scientific field except robotics, we have surrendered leadership to the Settlers. And, of course, we win out in the field of robotics by default, because the Settlers are foolish enough to fear robots.” Was there irony in her voice as she said that? Fredda herself was not sure.

  “But it is not just science that has fallen asleep. It is everything. Spacers make no new types of spacecraft or aircar. The new buildings that the robots put up are based on old designs. There are no new medicines to further extend our lives. There is certainly no new exploration out into space. ‘Fifty planets are enough’ has the power of a proverb. We say it the same way we say ‘enough is as good as a feast. ‘Except now Solaria has collapsed, and we are only forty-nine worlds. If Inferno goes on the way it has in the past, we will be forty-eight. With many living things, the cessation of growth is the first step toward death. If this is true for human societies, we are in grave danger.

  “In every field of human activity among the Spacers, the lines on the graph mark a slow, gentle decline as safe and sober indolence becomes the norm. We are losing ground even in the most basic and vital things. The birthrate here on Inferno fell below replacement level two generations ago. We live long, but we do not live forever. We die more than we give birth. Our population is in decline, and large parts of the city are now vacant. Those children that are born are largely raised, not by loving parents, but by robots, the same robots that will coddle our children all their lives and make it easy for them to be cut off from other humans.

  “Under such circumstances, it should come as no surprise that there are many among us who find we prefer the company of robots to humans. We feel safer, more comfortable, with robots. Robots we can dominate, robots we control, robots who protect us from that most dangerous threat to our quiet contentment: other people. For contact with humans is far riskier than dealing with robots. I will note in passing the increasingly popular perversion of having sex with specially designed robots. This vice is common enough that in some circles it is no longer even regarded as odd. But it represents the final surrender of contact with another person in favor of robotic coddling. There can be no real feeling, no sane emotion, vested in such encounters, merely the empty and ultimately dissatisfying release of physical urges.

  “We Infernals are forgetting how to deal with each other. I might add that our situation here in this regard is actually far healthier than on other Spacer worlds. On some of our worlds, the relatively mild taste for personal isolation we indulge here has become an obsession. There are Spacer worlds where it is considered unpleasant to be in the same room with another person, and the height of perversion to actually touch another person unless absolutely needful. There are no cities on these worlds, but merely widely scattered compounds, each home to a single human surrounded by a hundred robots. I need hardly mention the difficulties in maintaining the birthrate on such worlds.

  “Before we congratulate ourselves on avoiding that fate, let me remind you that the population of the city of Hades is declining far faster than would be accounted for by low birthrate: More and more people are moving out of town, setting up compounds of exactly the type I have just described. Such solo residences seem safer, more tranquil. There are no stresses or dangers when one is by oneself.

  “My friends, we must face a fact that has been staring us in the face for generations. The First Law has taught us to take no chances. It has taught us that all risk is bad, and that the safest way to avoid risk is to avoid effort and let the robots do it, whatever it is. Bit by bit, we have surrendered all that we are and all that we do to the robots.”

  There was a chorus of shouts and boos and hisses from the room, and an angry chant began in the back of the room, among the Ironheads. “Settler, Settler, Settler.” In the Ironhead view of things, there was no fouler name they could call her.

  Fredda let it go on for a minute or two, declining to challenge it this time, preferring to let it peter out on its own. The tactic worked – at least this once. Others in the audience turned toward the Ironheads and shushed them, and Kresh’s deputies leaned in toward a few of the rowdier ones. The Ironheads settled down.

  “If I may continue, then, to the Second Law of Robotics: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. This Law ensures that robots will be useful tools, and will remain subservient to humans, despite the many ways in which they can be physically and intellectually superior to us.

  “But in our analysis of the First Law, we saw that human reliance on robots creates a human dependence upon them. Second Law reinforces this. Just as we are losing the will and ability to see to our own welfare, we are losing the capacity for direct action. We can do nothing for ourselves, only what we can direct our robots to do for us. Much technical training consists of teaching the means by which to give complex orders to specialized robots.

  “The result: With the exceptions of our increasingly decadent and decorative arts, we create nothing new. As we shall see in a moment, even our art forms are not immune to robotic interference.

  “We tell ourselves that the Spacer way of life frees us to build a better, higher culture, frees us from all drudgery to explore the better places of human ability. But with what result?

  “Let me cite one example that is close to hand. We meet here tonight in one of our planet’s finest theaters, a palace of art, a monument to creativity. But who does the work here? To what use do we put this place? There is a short and simple answer. It is here that we order our robots to rake over the dead bones of our culture for us.

  “No one bothers to write plays anymore. It is too much effort. I have done some research on this point. It has been twenty years since a play by a living playwright has been performed here, or anywhere in the city of Hades. It is well over fifty years since the last time a large-cast show used only human actors. The extras, the chorus, the supporting players, are all theatrical robots, human in appearance and specially built for the purpose of re-creating human action on the stage. Indeed, it is becoming all too common for the lead roles to be taken by robots as well. But do not worry, we are told. The only truly creative task in theater has always been that of the director, and the
director will always be human.

  “I think the great actors of the past would object to being dismissed as noncreative. I likewise think that the great directors of the past would not regard their creative tasks as complete if they merely selected the play and ordered a pack of robots to perform it.

  “But perform the robots do, and perform it to an empty house. The performances put on here are seen by millions, millions who stay safely home and watch on televisor. It is rare that even twenty percent of the seats in this house are filled by humans. So, in order to provide the proper feel of a live performance, the management fills the empty seats with crude humanoid robots, capable of little more than laughing and clapping on command. Their rubber and plastic faces look enough like people to fool the watchers at home when the cameras pan the audience. You sit at home, ladies and gentlemen, watching a theater full of robots watching a stage full of robots. Where in all that is the human interaction that makes the theater live? The emotions in this room are thick and strong tonight. How could that be so if all of you were tailor’s dummies preprogrammed to respond to another tailor’s dummy giving this talk?” There was an uncomfortable silence, and Fredda noticed more than a few members of the audience glancing about, as if to reassure themselves that the people to either side of them were not audience-response robots.