Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!mcnc!uvaarpa!virginia!uvacs!cfh6r
From: cfh6r@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU (Carl F. Huber)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Asimov's Laws of Robotics (Revised)
Keywords: Elbow Room.
Message-ID: <2439@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Date: 31 May 88 21:04:03 GMT
References: <4134@super.upenn.edu> <3200014@uiucdcsm> <1484@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <1988May25.215516.208@mntgfx.mentor.com> <33085@linus.UUCP>
Reply-To: cfh6r@uvacs.cs.virginia.edu.UUCP (Carl F. Huber)
Organization: U.Va. CS dept.  Charlottesville, VA
Lines: 19

In article <33085@linus.UUCP> bwk@mbunix (Barry Kort) writes:
>Mike stumbles over the "must/may" dilemma:
>>>      II.   A robot may respond to requests from human beings,
>>                     ^^^
>>Shouldn't "may" be "must" here, to be imperitive?  Otherwise it would seem
>>to be up to the robot's discretion whether to respond to the human's requests.
>
>I changed "must" to "may" because humans sometimes issue frivolous or
>unwise orders.  If I tell Artoo Detoo to "jump in the lake", I hope
>he has enough sense to ignore my order.
>--Barry Kort

There may be some valid examples to demonstrate your point, but this 
doesn't cut it.  If you tell Artoo Detoo to "jump in the lake", you hope
he has enough sense to understand the meaning of the order, and that 
includes its frivolocity factor.  You want him (it?) to obey the order
according to its intended meaning.  There is also a lot of elbow room in
the word "respond" - this certainly doesn't mean "obey to the letter".
-carl