Droid Engineer Archive

With the "in concept" stuff comming up, a speeding idea flashed past my brain.

Having already shown that thay are capable of making sweeping changes to some of the fundamentals of how the game works (EG:the combat system), Irrespective of the implications, I think it would be an interesting poll for droid engineers if they mulled over the concept of being able to tinker with the IA of there robots (in some respect linked with the idea of "personalitys" for droids).

The Question I would like to propose : Assuming it were possible to impliment, do you think that allowing Droids to have Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics" as an Optionalpart of there construction and allowing droid engineers to "tinker" with there respective "weights" (thus giving some small sembelence of "intelligence" and uniqueness to your droids A.I.) would

A: be a welcome addition to the droid engineer class

and B: not take away the "feel of starwars"

I'm am perfectly aware that Asimov's laws have nothing to do with starwars which is why I'm asking the question really... do you think they would be a worthwhile addition ?

here are the 3 laws for those who need a refresher

Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"

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 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.

I think it's fair to say that where the term "human" is used it should actually say "any player race/owner"

the original laws were never written to account for the starwars universe.

The point you raise is a "technicality" really, and one easily accomidated for

for the most part I agree, how ever what this translate to in the 3 laws is actually a result of most droids not actually having a personality (thus why I said an optional part of droid construction)

R2-D2 as an example however has a VERY strong first rule acting above and beyond what might be required, activly placing himself in harms way to help his owner at times.

combat droids (IG 88 as an example) would on the other hand have a VERY weak first ruleand a VERY strong 3rd rule seeking self preservation over the health of others.

and there in lies the answer ... droids _are_ tools... but some of them have personalitys... and by including the laws it could help define the droid so much more than wether it burps and farts in public or is a modicum of civility

I didn't mean to sound mean, just open the discussion....

By your reply, you would take droids away from pvp. But I can just grab missions to kill rebels, most always they are humans. And having a droid attack them would be againist their programming. Or would you make them more like the Anti-Faction pets, only able to attack creatures no humaniods

It is a really cool idea though.

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X Machine'Zed X
Obsidian Dagger Squadron

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Takei_Urawaza wrote:

for the most part I agree, how ever what this translate to in the 3 laws is actually a result of most droids not actually having a personality (thus why I said an optional part of droid construction)

R2-D2 as an example however has a VERY strong first rule acting above and beyond what might be required, activly placing himself in harms way to help his owner at times.

combat droids (IG 88 as an example) would on the other hand have a VERY weak first ruleand a VERY strong 3rd rule seeking self preservation over the health of others.

and there in lies the answer ... droids _are_ tools... but some of them have personalitys... and by including the laws it could help define the droid so much more than wether it burps and farts in public or is a modicum of civility

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Your post contradicts itself. You cannot have a VERY WEAK first rule and a VERY STRONG 3rd rule, as a very strong 3rd rule would have to very strongly not conflict with 1 or 2. And for rule 2, that means anybody (including NPC's) would have the ability to tell your droid to stop attacking them, or give them any orders, leaving a potential for griefing.

The rules are good for robotics, but we are building droids. Droids are sentient beings, whereas robots are not, at least that's how I see it.

This is an intriguing concept, but these are ultimately two incompatible paradigms of artificial intelligence. It would be like trying to gel concepts from both Star Trek and Star Wars.

Asimov's Three Laws were the basis of the mathematical equations that governed the positronic matrix that formed the basis of a robot's AI. The laws were intended to govern all robots in a similar manner. The bulk of Asimov's fiction concerning robots explored how these three laws worked in practice, what happened when certain impediments, challenges, or powers were given to a robot, and what happened when a law was removed or modified.

In Star Wars, we really don't know much about the fundamental laws that govern droid AI. In Star Wars fiction, the emphasis is on what sort of tasks a droid was designed for. Because of the diversity of function and sophistication, it's likely that droid AI is just as diverse (in contrast to Asimov's robots whose AI were generally uniform). For example, a power droid probably does not know muchbeyond howto supply power and walk around. A protocol most likely has the most advanced AI, but even here there's no guarantee of the AI's fundamental rules. And of course there are droids whose primary function is to kill or assasinate.

The concept of droids and robots are very similar, in fact the later was most likely inspiration for the former. But Asimov's three laws could not be applied uniformly to droids, as the variety of droids is simply too great.

Sorry, I do not agree with mixing too much different universe of sci-fi. This is the Star Wars universe, not the civilized social world of Asimov.

Keep this out for now, let the devs FIX and FOCUS our DE proffession into a fun and functional level. I have seen a lot more creative and fun ideas then this plagerism.

BTW isn't there an IROBOT movie coming out? I can't wait =D

In the movies, and thus in the StarWars imaginary universe, droids did not have Asimov's laws. Not only did droids not have any particular compulsion to protect people, of any stripe, but there were even those who's purpose was to take life.

I therefore judge this to be a bad idea, as it would damage the StarWars look-and-feel of the game.

Furthermore, I judge the three laws themselves to be a bad idea, because they would tend to limit what could be done with a robot. Most of Asimov's stories about the robots and the three laws concern ways that he envisioned that the laws could cause trouble. Even he, who wrote them, thus cautioned that they would not be reliable. The reason for writing them was speculation about what would happen if mankind were ever able to create an artificial intellegence equal to or superior to his own. I think that a better solution would be torestrict one's robots to be below human intellegence. That is, a robot should be exactly smart enough to do it's job, and no smarter. If an AI smarter than a man were to be needed, I would hope that the programmer would be intellegent enough to instill in it a reverence for mankind. (I assume that if he could build it, he would be able to add this feature to the personality... if he couldn't then going ahead and building it anyway would be tantamount to suicide)

In addition, such restrictions would not work in a "real" community of people all building droids... You would always have that one lazy DE who didn't want to go to the trouble to put any restrictions on his AI's. Asimov's three laws only worked because therewere onlytwo sources for the "brains" for the robots in that universe.One was robots, building other robots... and of course they would be constrained to include the laws because they had them themselves. To leave them out might endanger men. The other was the company that invented the positronic brain in the first place.They were, because they were the only human source, therefore free to implement whatever lawsthey chose to. DE's make their own brains. Each one would be free to implement whatever laws he chose for his droids...

In other words, to add them to the game, you would have to essentially declare them to be a fundamental of nature. And we all know there is no such fundamental, no matter how much we might wish there were.