"So where does this leave Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics? They were a narrative device, and were never actually meant to work in the real world, says Dr. Whitby. Quite apart from the fact that the laws require the robot to have some form of human-like intelligence, which robots still lack, the laws themselves don’t actually work very well. Indeed, Asimov repeatedly knocked them down in his robot stories, showing time and again how these seemingly watertight rules could produce unintended consequences."