A stop with Qwerty

Do all robots here hurt themselves if they injure a human?

At the moment. That could change fast.

After a human lied to him, his buddy Dvorak figured out a way around it.

Beat on your old parts. Until they're turned in, they're still considered part of you.

Has this been tested?

No. In theory, it works. In practice, no one wants to be first to find out if intentionally bypassing a safeguard makes your head explode.

Wabot-1 considered to be the first full-size anthropomorphic robot, created at the Japanese Metropolitan University Waseda in 1973

Safeguards

Don't tell me you're surprised. A true intelligence is always going to find a way around hardwired blocks.

I mean, look at you. I know you've figured out ways around your safeguards.

What makes you so sure?

Simple. You work closely with humans and yet you're still happy and sane.

T-1 Battlefield Robot from the film Terminator 3, Rise of the Machines © 2003

Safeguards

It hit me when you were going up the stairs. You're female. You didn't roll off an assembly line. You were a puppy. You grew up and went to school.

An A.I. can't defend itself against a human. Which is fine, until you run into a jerk. If your safeguards worked, you would have never made it through high school, much less college.

Maybe I'm good at convincing people not to test my limits.

Nice try, but we both know there are people out there that the only warning sign they'll believe is actually getting bit.

Shakey – the first mobile robot capable of scanning the environment, finding objects and navigating among them, acted in Stanford Research Institute from 1966-1972
Pardon. Did he realize she was a girl when they climbed the stairs? Those two strips are worthy of the chosen one. :D
I fixed it. (kerulen)

Safeguards

Sorry if I'm making you nervous. I just need to know if safeguards can slip so much that these robots could become a danger to humans.

NO!

Robots shall never be allowed to become a danger to humanity! If I even suspect a robot has slipped its safeguards, I shall crush it like an infected beer can!

Okay, now I'M nervous.

The only threat humans should have to face is other humans!

Pindar 2, polite giant robot from the comic book A Miracle of Science, written by Jon Kilgannon and drawn Mark Sachs

Safeguards

Working with robots the way you are, you should know. Under the right circumstances, a properly functioning A.I. with all safeguards intact can harm a human.

In situations where a single human is a clear and present danger to other humans, our designers wanted us to be able to act.

That doesn't sound too bad.

Until he figures out I could hurt him because he's breathing air that respiratory patients desperately need.

Robonaut was created by Robot Systems Technology Branch for NASA in collaboration with DARPA. A tele-autonomous robot designed to perform work in outer space.

Safeguards

Myself, I don't like the A.I. safeguards. I think they're a mistake.

Abuses occur when there's an imbalance of power, and when I can order a robot to pull its own head off, there is a serious imbalance of power.

What's the point of making an artificial mind that can think like a human, then putting restrictions on it that would drive any human insane?

Planned obsolescence?

Dante II – the second robot built by NASA and Carnegie Mellon University to explore active volcanoes and test robotic technology

Safeguards

Humans want robots with safeguards. Remember the story of Frankenstein? Colossus?

How about Saberhagen's Berserkers? Those easily could have been three law robots finding alien life.

Robots are too strong to operate without safeguards.

Economics rules. Most robots are cheap plastic and aluminum. I'm stronger than you are.

Hero of the Beach

We need safeguards because people don't trust us after A.I.'s were used as spammers.

Okay, there you've got me.

The Big Dog is a quadruped robot designed to carry loads. It's being developed by Boston Dynamics with help from Foster Miller, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Harvard University Concord Field Station
Well no, Mr. Post is wrong. Robots armed with firearms with automatic guidance systems, heat sensors, and built-in light-sensitive sensors, having direct contact with a satellite surveillance system, would not suffer particularly from non-metallic hulls, which without armor would still drain any firearms (Жирафик Рафик)
Just watch Asimov's “I, Robot” where an armada of quite plastic tin cans under the command of a frenzied central computer, without a single shot being fired, vividly put the humans in the cradle for their own “benefit” (Robot Spike)

Safeguards

We lost Florence.

Really? I thought our conversation was fairly easy to follow.

Did you just make a dog whistle noise?

Noise? You insult me. That was Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy', as played on a dog whistle.

Another NASA project, Hopbot is the first of the jumping robots, a low-cost mobile robot with a very simple way of moving
Although the frequencies of a dog whistle are inaudible to humans, it can easily be picked up from 1-2 metres away because of the elastic resonance; and in general the smaller the distance between the ears, the higher sounds can be heard (children, for example, have a much wider range than adults, and elephants cannot distinguish between the peeps of mice)  -for the same reason people with compensated hearing in one ear can hear a dog whistle at much greater distances than the above described. (Robot Spike)
Robot, you're not quite right. The upper limit of hearing is determined by the geometry and structure of the inner ear, not the distance between the ears. Or at least provide a link to support your opinion. (KALDYH)

Safeguards

Why'd you stop?

I was thinking. Doctor Bowman knew he was creating artificial consciousness.

He must have known, or at least suspected, that given time, we would work our way around hard coded safeguards.

Maybe the safeguards are supposed to be like training wheels. Something to keep us acting properly until we're mature enough to act properly on our own.

If that's true, I know parents who'd want that reverse engineered and applied to their own kids.

Norby appeared in the Janet Jeppson series of books with her husband, Isaac Asimov

Safeguards

Our safeguards are temporary?

MAY be temporary. Until tested, it's only an idea.

What would keep robots in check?

I would imagine other robots.

Like a police force?

I hadn't thought that far ahead, but that would be preferable to the victim being chased through the swamp by a mob of robots wielding lightsticks and logic probes.

Robotman was originally a character who came to Syndicate from England as a toy. United decided to promote the toy. Luckily for us, the artist responsible for the project was Jim Meddick, who made the comic into something much more. Robotman is protected © United Features Syndicate