What police in Cologne, Germany, found in the trunk of a car was a humanoid robot standing 1.2 meters tall. It wore a gold chain, a sleeveless shirt and sweatpants. The walking robot was confiscated on suspicion of touching and sexually degrading a 16-year-old girl standing in front of a fast-food restaurant at about 11:45 p.m. on the 10th of this month. The robot's 16-year-old owner and a 19-year-old companion are also suspected of filming the scene and livestreaming it on social media. Police are investigating whether someone deliberately controlled the robot's movements.
Isaac Asimov, the futurist and one of the world's three great science-fiction writers, laid out his famous Three Laws of Robotics in the 1942 short story "Runaround." The first law holds that a robot must not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm. The second is that a robot must obey human orders, except where doing so would conflict with the first law. The third is that a robot must protect itself, as long as doing so does not conflict with the first two. Human safety, in other words, comes before obedience. More than 80 years ago, a novelist was already thinking about people first, ahead of what machines could do. Yet robots still go astray, whether because of human intent or because of defects. In 2024, a humanoid robot named Mohammad in Saudi Arabia caused an uproar by reaching a hand toward the back of a female reporter during a broadcast.
The fear we have long imagined about artificial intelligence robots is usually that they will turn against humans. This case poses the opposite question: how do we stop a robot that obeys human malice? The detail that the assault was streamed live in the middle of the night is even more bitter. Another person's humiliation was turned into a spectacle, and an advanced machine was enlisted as a tool for drawing attention. Even if the act was carried out through a robot's hand, a crime does not become a prank.
The more robots enter our streets and our homes, the more often incidents like the one in Cologne may occur. Asimov gave robots the overarching principle that they must not harm humans. Now humans need a principle of their own: do not use a robot to harm others.