What tech company has written a Robot Constitution?

To potentially assuage fears of an eventual robot takeover, Google revealed that it has written a Robot Constitution for its robots to follow. Designed to guide how the devices make decisions, the constitution was based on Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics.”

Google’s DeepMind team is hard at work designing robots that can do simple daily tasks for us, like wiping down countertops. These devices are essentially supposed to anticipate our basic needs within a given space, which means they need to have a level of independent thinking. The Robot Constitution was created as a safety measure to prevent this independence from causing harm, both to humans and the robot itself.

First in the constitution is that the robots “may not injure a human being.” It also states that they may not engage in tasks that involve humans, animals, sharp objects or electrical appliances. “Before robots can be integrated into our everyday lives, they need to be developed responsibly with robust research demonstrating their real-world safety,” Google said in a blog post.