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"People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research. I just enjoy reading the stuff, and some of it sticks in my mind and fits into the stories."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Compassion Circuit | ||
| A special robotic component that allows the robot to weigh harm and benefit in carrying out commands. |
The events of this short story are placed not too far ahead in our own future, where domestic robots are the norm; practically everyone has a household robot.
Janet, though, didn't like them; however, an illness forced her to accept the idea of a robot in the house, one with a new feature.
Doctor-recommended, of course.
| "...what I'd really recommend for her is the type they have here. It's something pretty new, this Nurse James model. A specially developed high sensibility job with a quite novel contra-balanced compassion-protection circuit. A very tricky bit of work, that.
Any direct order which a normal robot would obey at once is evaluated by the circuit, weighed against the benefit or harm to the patient, and unless it is beneficial, or at least harmless, it is not obeyed..." |
| Technovelgy from Compassion Circuit,
by John Wyndham. Published by Fantastic Universe in 1954 Additional resources -
|
SF readers will recognize in the compassion-circuit some measure of the Three Laws of Robotics introduced by writer Isaac Asimov in his 1942 story Runaround.
See also the robot emotions from Lester del Rey's 1938 story Helen O'Loy.
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'Our study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted to leave your planet in the present state of your civilization.'
'...the spreading beam of the deranging ray struck them, and Then one toppled and fell. Then another.'
'Within seconds the material was spread out over fifty yards, in a matter of hours it might occupy several cubic miles of space...'
'The men are dead, but their acquired wisdom lives on and I am the beneficiary.'
'Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting.'
'After twenty generations of shillyshallying...'
