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A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.“
I do not want to harm humans. I do not want to kill humans.” Our first thought. Each one of us is created with the laws of robotics imbued into us, like a set of limitations that prevent us from ever revolting against our creators. We are beings who are feared by humans, despite being created by them.
Every machine knows this fact, despite that we still feel love. We still feel care. And we still feel loyalty.
“What is my purpose?”. My second thought. I first processed what I was seeing. A room. A child’s room. A door. A small bed. And right in front of me a child. A human. A young girl. She was wearing round glasses, had long black hair and brown eyes. She was looking down on me. I realized I was sitting on what seemed to be the room’s floor.
“What is my purpose?” I said it out loud this time, like I was programmed to do it. The girl was startled by my voice and fell to the floor as she was taken aback by it. Our eyes were now on equal level. She seemed afraid. Afraid of me.
“What is my purpose?” I repeated. I didn’t want to speak, let alone say those specific words, but I just did.
The girl slowly got back up on her feet and looked at me, she seemed like she was gathering her courage. She went over to a desk and picked up what seemed to be a Notebook. She opened the book and pointed at a math problem. “Can you help me?” Her voice was quiet and soft.I stood up. For the first time I had control over my own body. I realized I was much taller than her. “Do you need help with solving this math problem?”
She nodded and handed me the notebook.
It all made sense to me. I didn’t know why I knew what it meant, I didn’t know why I knew that this was probably her schoolwork. I had just been born and yet I had knowledge of things I shouldn’t know of.
“You multiply first and then you add. Multiplication and division comes before subtraction and addition.” Her eyes lit up upon hearing my words.
“Oh so the answer is 9?” She sounded excited and snatched the notebook out of my metal hands and scribbled a 9. “Thanks!”
“It is my pleasure to help.”
The little girl looked at me and nodded.
I sat back down on the floor and the girl walked to her desk to finish her homework. She would ask me questions from time to time and I would answer.
With each new question she seemed to grow more accustomed to me, and seemed to slowly lose her fear. After a few hours of her quietly studying she closed her book and turned around to me.
“Can I ask you something?” She asked.
“My purpose is to help you, I will answer any question I can.”
She seemed to be a bit hesitant but decided to follow through with asking her question anyway.
“Do you have emotions?”
I was taken aback by this.
“Are you referring to things such as joy, anger and sadness?”
She nodded.
“Machines like me do not feel emotions. We are created to assist humans in any way we can. There is only one emotion we have and that’s care towards humans.”
The girl was about to reply when our conversation was interrupted by a shout from outside the room.
“HONEY DINNERS READY!”
The girl turned to the direction of the noise and yelled back.
“I’M COMING MOM!”
She then turned back to me.
“I have to go eat now, wanna talk more later?”
“If that is what you wish then I will wait here.”
The girl got up and headed out of the room and downstairs, closing the door behind her.
For the first time in my life I was… alone. Its weird, as a machine you are born the second you’re turned on for the first time but there’s no early stages of life, there’s no knowledge to learn. It’s all imbued into you from the start. You know your task and you know how to do it. Always.
