New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI
By Frank Pasquale
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020

A mere glance at the title of Frank Pasquale’s new book New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI will have science fiction fans of a certain vintage immediately flashing back to the writings of Isaac Asimov, and thankfully Pasquale - perhaps a sci-fi fan of a certain vintage himself? - is right there to provide the reminder right away of Asimov’s celebrated 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 the 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 Laws.

Asimov created his laws back in 1942, when he and his fellow pulp writers imagined them applying to stereotypical robot servitors that thickly populated the future-visions of the time. And as surreal as it seems, a kid reading about those original Asimov laws has managed to live right into an Asimov-style future, where automation and smart machines are everywhere, in every walk and aspect of modern life. Given this, and considering how different the present is from the future Asimov and others imagined, Pasquale has some new laws he offers, and his book elaborates on them:

1. Robotic systems and AI should complement professionals, not replace them.

2. Robotic systems and AI should not counterfeit humanity

3. Robotic systems and AI should not intensify zero-sum arms races

4. Robotic systems and AI must always indicate the identity of their creator(s), controller(s0, and owner(s).

And in his elaboration of these new laws, Pasquale is very quick to summon both hope and dystopia, sounding both notes immediately in his narrative:

The stakes of technological advance rise daily. Combine facial recognition databases with ever-cheapening micro-drones, and you have an anonymous global assassination force of unprecedented precision and lethality. What can kill can also cure; robots could vastly expand access to medicine if we invested more in researching and developing them. Businesses are taking thousands of small steps toward automating hiring, customer service, and even management.

“All these developments,” he continues, “change the balance between machines and humans in the ordering of our daily lives.” The nightmare version of that changed balance has humans penned into the losing end of the equation, at the mercy of the very AI systems they themselves created. Any book that opens with the idea of “an anonymous global assassination force of unprecedented precision and lethality” can be expected to spend time exploring that version, but Pasquale concentrates more on what he calls “human automation,” in which robotic systems and AI, in all their modern proliferation, are shaped to work alongside humans, in conjunction and ultimate subjugation to them (a rule of persons, as he writes, not machines). 

The question hinges on the polar opposites of human nature, with “monolithic neoliberalism” on the one end, driving technological advances with the goal of maximizing investment returns, and on the other and, Pasquale’s new laws of robotics, urging dozens of cleanly-imagined and deeply-thought ways to revamp and improve the relationship of humans to their technology. The book market has seen dozens of these books in the last few years, all aimed at addressing the obvious growing issues that are reflected in everybody’s daily lives. Doctors, airline pilots, Wall Street traders, warehouse managers … virtually every profession not only consults but relies on technological intelligences. The pathway to edging out all human element entirely is so obvious that the collaborationist sentiments behind Pasquale’s laws come to seem all the more reassuring, all the more urgent. 

And that urgency grows all the sharper when considering what Pasquale refers to as “the political economy of media” - by far the way most people in the world currently interact with robotic systems and AI. If you think about all you know - and imagine all you don’t know - about the ominous reach of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, you’ll go back and re-read Pasquale’s new laws with fresh appreciation.

—Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The American Conservative. He writes regularly for The National, The Vineyard Gazette, and The Christian Science Monitor. His website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.