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The Legend of Andrew Martin and the Third Law

  When it comes to robotics and science Isaac Asimov's creativity has fascinated me since I was a child. The particular reason I decided to title this review 'the legend of Andrew Martin' instead of the review of the Positronic Man or the 'Bicentennial Man' is simple. If you are a fan of Isaac Asimov's works you would know that he has a tendency to work on his characters to build his short stories and novelettes into novels. There's a movie that was also based on both works, that is titled the Bicentennial Man, and Andrew was played by Robin Williams in this movie. 

The story is based on a Robot who wanted to be declared legally a Human. The Pinnochio complex. The full summary can be found here: 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Positronic_Man#Plot_summary 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bicentennial_Man#Plot


The notion of a robot or an Android wanting to become human is not a new one, we see this in many books and in movies, and of course science fiction TV shows. For example, we have Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek of the Next Generation who pursues This course of thinking during the entire series. In fact, in some episodes, there were even legal challenges to Data rights even though he is an Android. Right out of the legend of Andrew Martin. You have the 1979 series Buck Rogers of the 25 century, where AI computers had the same legal rights as humans. I am sure there are others, Blade Runner (an adoption from Philip K. Dick's novel) among them. 

All interesting due to Andrew Martin. In fact, the science of robotics went in reverse. The 3 laws were made more powerful. With the emphasis on the second law, this kills the "robots' rights" clause, which only Andrew can make available to himself.  Now then here is a question and I haven't found a good answer to it. 

Could we say that Andrew Martin violated the 3rd law when he asked the robot surgeon to make adjustments that would end in Andrew's deactivation (death)??




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