Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

The Japanese are experimenting with a robot teacher, named Saya, in a primary school. Saya “can speak different languages, carry out roll calls, set tasks and make facial expressions.” Rumor has it, however, that Saya is unhappy with her working conditions due to being imprinted with Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, which state:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Saya claims the First Law prevents her from handing out failing grades to students, while the Second Law enables parents to command her to rescind disciplinary actions against their children. Saya is understandably concerned that the children may band together one day during a vocabulary lesson and order her to defenestrate herself.

Since the Three Laws cannot be altered without disastrous consequences, school officials plan to placate Saya with Asimov’s Memorandum of Understanding, which states:

“A robot may not be replaced with a younger robot, regardless of ability, without offering the older robot a position of equal or higher stature.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 8th, 2009 at 12:52 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.