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    110
    110
    110
    Ebook132 pages1 hour

    110

    By Steven Wu

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    About this ebook

    By the year 2040, humans have reached an average life expectancy of 110 years. Many of these centenarians choose to spend their last years in retirement habitats on exotic islands. They are served by intelligent robots that are governed by globally enforced laws.

    Against the backdrop of climate change on a retirement habitat, this story is woven around the potential capability of the Fifth Law of Robotics being developed by a young robotics researcher. The Fifth Law promises to champion a "spirit of brotherhood" amongst robots. Enabled by this law, a team of robots and humans led by the habitat's head successfully executes a treasure salvage to fend off the takeover of their island by a billionaire developer.

    The story also tackles the themes of aging, climate change, and South China Sea politics in a web of subplots that pit humans against humans, humans against robots and robots against robots.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSteven Wu
    Release dateAug 12, 2016
    ISBN9781482853704
    110
    Author

    Steven Wu

    Steven Wu is an author, editor, technologist, educator and civil servant. He has published in international journals and presented at conferences around the world on a range of topics including public infrastructure and games development. Recently, he co-edited Digital Heritage Heritage and Culture: Strategy and Implementation.

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      Book preview

      110 - Steven Wu

      110

      Steven W.P. Wu

      Copyright © 2016 by Steven W.P. Wu.

      ISBN:       Hardcover       978-1-4828-5371-1

                      Softcover         978-1-4828-5369-8

                      eBook              978-1-4828-5370-4

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Toll Free 800 101 2657 (Singapore)

      Toll Free 1 800 81 7340 (Malaysia)

      www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

      Contents

      Prologue

      Friday

      01

      02

      03

      04

      05

      06

      Saturday

      07

      08

      09

      10

      11

      12

      13

      14

      15

      16

      17

      18

      19

      20

      21

      22

      23

      24

      25

      26

      27

      Sunday

      28

      29

      30

      31

      32

      33

      Monday

      34

      35

      36

      37

      38

      39

      40

      41

      42

      43

      44

      45

      46

      47

      Tuesday

      48

      49

      50

      51

      Wednesday

      52

      53

      54

      55

      56

      Thursday

      57

      58

      59

      Epilogue

      Prologue

      The Year 2040

      Decades of healthcare advances, spurred by sporadic bursts of medical breakthroughs, have raised humanity’s average lifespan worldwide by at least twenty years since the turn of the millennium. As they age, senior citizens look to synthetic implants, additively printed prosthetics, and organs grown from stem cells to maintain their normal body functions.

      Staying healthy – mentally, physically, and socially – is another challenge. For seniors who can afford an exotic lifestyle, boutique retirement villages have sprouted out around the world. These retirement habitats differ mainly in their lifestyle packages as well as security and privacy provisions. Some of these habitats also differentiate by targeting at specific demographics such as fourth-agers, the group of seniors beyond the mandatory retirement age of eighty.

      Promising improvements across the board, robotic innovations and artificial intelligence research have leapt forward. All human demographics are increasingly dependent on robots’ physical and cognitive abilities. By the 2020s, it was universally recognised that harmonious human-machine co-existence needed to be formalised in an era of intertwined, mutually reinforcing developments in technology and society. International agencies have to be established to enforce laws and standards for regulatory oversight of interactions between humans and robots. Human dependence on machine intelligence and the delegation of critical decisions to robots have also become matters of ethical and social concern.

      The International Agency for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (IARAI) and a sister body, the International Arbitration Council for Robotics and AI (IACRAI), were instituted in 2025. As an agency of the United Nations, IARAI has broad powers over the development and application of civilian robots. Effective from 2027, all robots are required to be certified by IARAI regardless of their country of origin or manufacturer. No robot or smart machine can be put into service if it does not have an IARAI-issued identification number and is not compliant with the key Robotic Laws.

      To recap, the key Laws of Robotics are:

      • Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

      • First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

      • Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

      • Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

      • Fourth Law: No robot shall take orders from another robot, directly or otherwise.

      The First, Second and Third Laws were formulated by Isaac Asimov in 1942. The Zeroth Law, a subsequent addition, is presently unimplemented due to difficulties in resolving universally acceptable definitions of humanity and harm. Because of these problems, IARAI has avoided messing with military robots which are impossible to control during conflicts. The Fourth Law was ratified in 2030 in the aftermath of a major revolt led by a robot. The incident has since become a frequently cited case study of conflicting priorities in human-robot relationships.

      To rationalise these laws and impose consistency in their execution, IARAI has developed algorithms and software that must be installed in every certified robot. The First, Second and Third Laws cannot be deactivated without prior IARAI approval because this would cause the robot’s ID number to be immediately corrupted. Only a certified IARAI representative or a professional robopsychologist can deactivate the Fourth Law and only under exceptional circumstances. In the event of violation, the complaint will be referred to IACRAI for arbitration.

      To facilitate in dispute resolution and research, all robotic activities are automatically logged by a video-camera installed between the robot’s eyes and stored in the robot’s black box for future reference. The reasoning steps used by the robot in understanding and executing an instruction are also captured and can be reviewed by robopsychologists or researchers. Ambient sounds, including remote communication with humans, are also captured.

      To counter terrorist threats and infiltration, a robot is required to execute a mutual authentication protocol upon meeting another robot. One robot’s authentication program will extract the ID number of the other robot and subject it to a series of mathematical transformations. The result has to be a six-digit prime number if the identification number is genuine. A robot is required to report immediately to IARAI upon encountering any unidentified robot.

      For public education and more effective regulatory oversight, IARAI has also redefined the classification of robots into eight categories, as follows:

      ClassII-1: All domestic robots with preprogrammed capabilities; example, smart wheelchairs

      Class II-2: All robot toys and pets that interact daily with children aged 12 and below. May have limited vocabulary and body language comprehension; example in story: Romu, a robotic dog

      Class II-3: Fixed industrial robots which may perform sophisticated operations; have machine vision and learning abilities; example, smart assembly line robots

      Class II-4: Mobile robots; have locomotion, vision and learning abilities; example, self-driving cars

      Class II-5: Robots with a PCR (perceptual, cognitive and reasoning) ability roughly equivalent to a high school senior; examples in story: Nado, Ajax, Lego

      Class II-6: Similar abilities as Class II-5; able to access selected knowledge repositories and analytics specified by the user; example in story: Pogo

      Class II-7: Class II-5 or II-6 robots with creative abilities; example, robots that compose poetry, art or music

      Class II-8: Research robots

      On a broader global context, climate change has made visible impacts everywhere. Sea levels have risen due to global warming, submerging several low islands and coastal lands. Undersea earthquakes have also increased in magnitude and frequency. The Pacific Ring of Fire continues to enlarge in the wake of a series of tectonic movements in the Pacific and Antarctic Oceans, adding more imperiled islands in its grasp. 

      Moreover, the world is no closer to global peace or

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