Minding the machines

Amid all the hype about South Korea's proposed robot charter, let's not forget the more important question of whether robots should assume human roles in the first place.

Anticipating an event horizon -- only one bar mitzvah away -- in which intelligent service robots become a part of daily life, the South Korean call for a "Robot Ethics Charter" smacks of the science fiction of Isaac Asimov.

When thinking through the South Korean agenda, Asimov is definitely worth considering. Intentionally or not, his fiction charted a path that has inspired the actual development and implementation of artificial intelligence (AI). Asimov was totally underwhelmed by Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and the "dull, hundred-times-told tale" about humanly created, intelligent monsters that will rise up to destroy us. So he constructed a new narrative where robots "were machines designed by engineers, not pseudo-men created by blasphemers."

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