Laws of Robotics

It would technically be the fifth law.

Zeroth Law - A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

But if you're starting from zeroth it would be the fourth.
- and with robots and computers it just makes sense to start with 0
May not injure you say. Can't be injured if you're dead. (P.S. I'm not a robot)
- Sounds like something a robot would say.
- Pretty sure death qualifies as "harm".
- The concept of death may be hard to explain because robots don't need to run 24\7 in order to keep functioning. Until instructed otherwise,a machine would think a person with a cardiac arrest is safe to boot later.
couldn't that be inferred from the first law?
- Actually no! Lower numbered laws have priority over higher numbers, meaning that if they come into conflict the higher number law can be broken. While the first law says they can't allow humans to come to harm, the zeroth law basically says that if it's for the good of the species, they absolutely can kill or otherwise hurt individual humans.
I just finished the book today 🥲

This just reminds me I'm mildly irritated that robots in fiction have glowing eyes so often. Light is supposed to go into eyes, not come out of them!

Robots or any part of an automated production line with a camera typically has a light as well to either see in low light conditions or to ensure it always sees with a similar amount of light hitting the lense.
- Also, a lot of the machine vision systems I've run up against use red light, but it is kind of complex. If they want to detect say blood, I think blue light would actually give better contrast for detection.
They addressed this on the Orville. The glowing dots were not eyes. The droid had sensors that did all the work. The "eyes" were an aesthetic addition.
- "The last thing you need is more desert"
  "Excuse me?!"
  "As I cannot stutter, I must conclude that you heard me"
  Isaac is one of the best parts of that show lmao
I really like the design of Assaultron from Fallout 4, they didn't have such issue because their eye is placed just above the glowy part, and the glowy part is the head laser that will one shot you.
So long as the light isn't coming from BEHIND the lense then you can think of it being like a camera flash
Or just think of it as the power indication LED being made stylish
To be fair it makes it harder to tell where the cameras are pointed (assuming they're not wide angle lenses and they're trying to work similarly to humans)

"Come on, you can trust me. You're thinking of the old red light Agimus. Blue light Agimus wants to help!"

    
self.setEyeColor(self.isGood() ? 'blue' : 'red');

Could we do that for people too, please?

Ooh imagine the chaos at some executive meetings where everyone's evil eyes are blinding eachother.
- The intensity of the red light should be proportional to the level of evil. You could literally put solar panels in those meetings.

Well, can't argue that it's not practical

If they’re evil it presumably means they’re disobeying the first three laws… they may disobey the fourth law too to help cover their other crimes

In the movie the bad ones didn't exactly disobey the laws, they merely found a loophole where by they can protect humans by taking over completely so "human error" couldn't harm humans.

I'm all for it. Makes them easier see. FOR SUPER EEEAAARRRTTTHHH

I think it's supposed to represent errors in the robots code like "I'm evil cuz i'm bugged"