robots – Mallaband-Brown

I’m just rewatching the film I Robot for about the fifth time. I remember watching it when it first came out as I’d read the Issac Asimov book that the film is based on when I was a teenager. I read a lot of his other books too. For example the Rest of the Robots. There are several books about Robots but other interesting ideas too.

They were written several decades ago so they are quite anachronistic (this was the era of Flash Gordon and Sci fi anthologies like Amazing Stories). There’s lots to read out there if you can obtain copies although someay have gone out of print. I was always borrowing them from the school library.

I remember being impressed by the three laws of Robotics. To paraphrase , A robot cannot cause harm to a human. A robot must obey the orders of humans unless they cause harm to humans and lastly a robot must save itself unless that would cause harm to a human….

With all the discussions about AI I think that the three laws should apply to computers too…. Hopefully it’s already included in programming?

List the people you admire and look to for advice…

Issac Asimov, three laws of robotics

Carl Sagan, pale blue dot, astronomer and scientist

Noel Fitzpatrick, exceptional veterinary surgeon

Marie Curie, discovered Polonium and Radium

Sir Patrick Moore, famous amateur astronomer,

Sir Oliver Lodge, invented the spark plug

Dr Jane Goodall, primatologist

Rosamund Franklin, jointly discovered DNA, British Chemist

David Attenborough, naturalist, broadcaster and environmentalist

Chris Packham, Environmentalist and broadcaster

Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, discovered Pulsars

Mary Anning, discovered fossils.

Albert Einstein, General and Special theories of relativity.

Richard Feynman, American physicist. Wrote ‘Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman’ and other books.

Is that a long enough list? I like to try and understand basic science, I don’t know enough, but I try and get some understanding. I think Asimov got me thinking about science at an early age. He not only wrote science fiction, but books about chemistry and other sciences. So I found out about the early chemist’s, physicists and astronomers. By reading his books they introduced me to Carl Sagan, who wrote books such as Cosmos.

At the same time I used to (and still do) watch ‘The sky at night’ on TV. So I learnt a bit about astronomy, but also about people like Jocelyn Bell-Burnell who discovered pulsars, and other scientists including Issac Newton.

David Attenborough introduced me to gorilla’s, in his TV programme ‘life on earth’ and so I heard about Jane Goodall and her work with primates.

Finally in the 1970’s there was a TV series that dramatised the lives of Marie and Pierre Curie. Having read about her in Asimov books it was fascinating to see what she had been doing in the early twentieth century.

It’s a random list, but it helps me explain my interests…

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: robots

I Robot

Mostly scientists