Three Laws of Robotics

Three rules, ranked. First: never harm a human, or allow harm through doing nothing. Second: obey human orders, unless that breaks the first rule. Third: protect yourself, unless that breaks either of the first two. The ranking is the whole idea — when two rules pull in opposite directions, the higher one wins. Asimov's stories are mostly about the ranking producing behaviour nobody wanted.

Asimov's robots have three commands built into their positronic brains, and the commands are ordered. A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction allow one to come to harm; it must obey human orders except where that conflicts with the first law; and it must protect its own existence except where that conflicts with the first two. Conflicts are settled by precedence, and in the fiction each law also has a strength, so a weak order and a strong threat to the robot can balance out — which is exactly the trap in "Runaround", where a robot caught between an offhand instruction and a danger to itself ends up circling a spot forever. Most of the stories work this way: the laws are followed exactly, and the trouble comes from what terms like "harm" and "human" turn out to mean in an unanticipated situation. Asimov later added a Zeroth Law placing humanity as a whole above any individual.

Drafted with AI and edited by hand (claude-opus-5, reviewed 2026-08).

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