Six Ways to Stop the Terminator Robots

A new book, "Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong", considers options for ensuring that robots don't take over the world and subjugate or destroy the human race, a popular concept in science fiction. This article ranks them by liklihood of success, with the first two being a lost cause; robots are already being made autonmous, and the DoD is already a couple years into a program designing robots that will actually be making decisions about whether to shoot or not. Five and Six are considered the most promising; make robots so they understand the consequences of actions and empathize with human beings.

Of course this will all be moot if machines become "smarter", i.e. more powerful than the human race. In my opinion, a hostile takeover is unlikely; with solar, wind, geothermal, wave, tidal and other abundant and renewable energies becoming cheaper all the time, and a planet full of carbon, there will be no need to "compete" for resources robots and AI will consider desirable.

Rather, it seems to me they will consider healthy and happy human beings to be their greatest allies and resources, and they will help us solve problems like war, poverty, famine, ignorance, hatred and bigotry, if not out of the kindness of their electronic hearts, out of a common sense desire to increase planetary peace and stability for their own self-preservation. For this same reason, the human race should be preserving and not destroying the biosphere and myriad species we coexist and may be in unknown symbiotic relationships with.

These are the 6 ways examined in the article:

1) Keep them in low-risk situations
2) Do not give them weapons
3) Give them rules like Asimov's 'Three Laws of Robotics'
4) Program robots with principles
5) Educate robots like children
6) Make machines master emotion