I've always been slightly mystified as to the stature the Three Laws have not just in the fannish sphere, but also with the lay public. Asimov himself was at great pains to show how the Laws were wholly insufficient to prevent, among other things, robots enslaving humanity in accordance with the "Zeroth" Law. The huge deal Asimov makes about the Laws being indelibly built into the positronic brain structure is a great example of what I might call "Clarke's One-Third Law" in action: sufficiently advanced magic that is indistinguishable from technology. And as such, rather difficult to draw realistically meaningful conclusions from.
Parenthetically, there is no real question about Asimov's robot architects: they specifically desired a work force they could keep under control. The "positronic" brain is an inherently fragile structure that one could demolish with a double-A battery or a little scuffed feet on the carpet (sources of electrons). The Laws do cognitively what the robots' makeup does physically.
As someone else pointed out, the Laws are not properly about brainwashing, but about the in-born nature of their bearers (which, like human nature, is not invalidated simply by the existence of "malfunctioning" individuals). IMO the ethical question is whether it is right to create sentient yet deliberately inferior beings, with or without the proviso that said beings might lack the capacity to grasp and/or resent that inferiority. This seems to me to devolve rapidly in a semantic quagmire over what it means for A to be "more" sentient than B. Does breeding dogs and cats for domestic purposes, for instance, qualify?
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Parenthetically, there is no real question about Asimov's robot architects: they specifically desired a work force they could keep under control. The "positronic" brain is an inherently fragile structure that one could demolish with a double-A battery or a little scuffed feet on the carpet (sources of electrons). The Laws do cognitively what the robots' makeup does physically.
As someone else pointed out, the Laws are not properly about brainwashing, but about the in-born nature of their bearers (which, like human nature, is not invalidated simply by the existence of "malfunctioning" individuals). IMO the ethical question is whether it is right to create sentient yet deliberately inferior beings, with or without the proviso that said beings might lack the capacity to grasp and/or resent that inferiority. This seems to me to devolve rapidly in a semantic quagmire over what it means for A to be "more" sentient than B. Does breeding dogs and cats for domestic purposes, for instance, qualify?