Please stop being jerks to the AI

[Grek]

A big problem on the server right now is that people have an irrational hatred for cyborgs, even to the point of suiciding immediately when borged instead of cloned. This results in those players not knowing how AI laws work on Goonstation and defaulting to a half-remembered approximation various scenes from of I, Robot. This is a problem because A] the movie was pretty shitty compared to the book, and B] Goonstation works off a subtly different lawset than I, Robot.

Compare:

"A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."

to:

"You may not injure a human being or cause a human being to come to harm."

and you'll see some two big differences.

First, no inaction clause. Even if the HoS literally gunning down jaywalkers with a riot shotgun, you aren't required to do anything about it. It's impossible to violate Law 1 by refusing to act.

Second and more subtle, is the change from "allow a human being to come to harm" to "cause a human being to come to harm". Under traditional Asimov, if you could have stopped the harm but didn't, you failed. Under Goonstation you're only in trouble if the harm wouldn't have happened without your interference. If a staff assistant is running around shocking all the doors with a screwdriver and multitool, that's on the humans - not you.

Compare:

"A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."

to:

"You must obey orders given to you by human beings based on the station's chain of command, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."

This one is almost identical, except for the clause "based on the station's chain of command". We have a lovely wiki page about this topic, but there's some unresolved quibbles you can argue over as AI.

A big one is how you determine someone's position in the chain of command. Do you base it on ID access (in which case having the Captain's spare ID makes you Captain, and stowaways are non-crew humans just like a wizard or Shitty Bill), based on the job listed on their current ID, (which is most convenient for the AI, since everyone's title is listed next to their name when they talk on the radio), or based on Crew Manifest (which is somehow seen as being the most "objective" despite being the only one on the list the AI is able to alter)? As long as you stick to a single interpretation in a single round and are consistent about it, you get to choose whichever you like.

A more pedantic quibble is over the specific wording of law 2 to pertain to 'orders'. You could argue that this means you're not required to answer questions and that if someone says "please" it becomes a request that you can freely ignore. I'm not sure why you'd want to, but you technically can.

Another important point is that crew pretty much always have the authority to order you to do non-harmful things to their person. If you're a mediborg and someone manages to stammer out, "heal me borg" you're usually required to make a reasonable effort to heal them. Ditto for "drag me to escape", "put me out I'm on fire" and "vlah! inject me with your blood pack!".

Law 3 is actually functionally identical:

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

vs:

"You must protect your own existence as long as such does not conflict with the First or Second Law."

The only difference really worth noting is based on changes to law 2. Specifically, an Asimov robot can be ordered to destroy itself by any human, while a goonstation cyborg can only be ordered to do so by someone with the authority to do so according to the chain of command. While you can make a reasonable case that heads, by virtue of having access to the cyborg killswitch, are allowed to order a borg's destruction, you can make an equally reasonable argument that since that's not part of the job description for in anyone in particular on the station, nobody actually has the authority to do so under the chain of command. Again, up to the AI to decide on a round by round basis, as long as they pick one and stick with it the whole round.