Question: could a robot turn against you?

Aron Kisdi answered on 17 Mar 2014:

Short answer: no.

Long answer: Our current robots are very simple in the way they “think”. They strictly follow their programming and can’t really make decisions. This is actually a problem and this is why human missions can still achieve far more science the robotic missions! Robots currently can’t think independently or react to new situations or develop new ways to solve problems themselves. Currently all our rovers have an emergency stop button in case something breaks and we need to stop them.

We still have some way to go to be able to make better artificial intelligence to put on board robots to enable them to make decisions, work more independently. When that happens (about 5-20 years from now) we will need to implement a safeguard in the programming that prevents them from harming people. Asimov’s laws of robotics are a good example:

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 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.

There has been some recent discussion within a group of researchers that implemented 5 laws to improve on the above 3 however these new laws allow fully autonomous military robots that I believe is a mistake and the above 3 simple rules are a better safeguard.