This article is from the Isaac Asimov FAQ, by Edward J. Seiler firstname.lastname@example.org and John H. Jenkins email@example.com with numerous contributions by others.
The television program "Star Trek: The Next Generation" included an
android character, Data, whom we are specifically told (in the episode
"Datalore") was created in an attempt to bring "Asimov's dream of a
positronic robot" to life. Unfortunately, the producers of the show
locked onto the "positronic" aspect as if that were the key quality to
Asimov's robots. Asimov's view was exactly the opposite -- his robots are
"positronic" because positrons had just been discovered when he started
writing robot stories and the word had a nice science-fictiony ring to
it. The use of positrons was just an engineering detail and relatively
unimportant to him.
Asimov's key insight was that, inasmuch as we engineer our tools to be
safe to use, we would do the same with robots once we start making them --
and that the main safeguards for an intelligent being are its ethics. We
would, therefore, build ethics into our robots to keep them going off on
uncontrollable killing sprees.
In some sense, the specific Three (Four) Laws are themselves an
engineering detail, the robotic equivalent of the Ten Commandments -- it
is a specific ethical system but not the only one possible. In Asimov's
universe, they are the basis for robotic ethics and so absolutely
fundamental to robotic design that it is virtually impossible to build a
robot without them.
Asimov tended not to let other people use his specific Laws of Robotics,
but his essential insight -- that robots will have in-built ethical
systems -- is freely used.
In particular, Data *is* an "Asimovian" robot because he *does* have an
in-built ethical system. He does *not* have the Three Laws, however
(witness the episode "Measure of Man" in which he refuses to follow a
direct order from a superior officer [Second Law] without invoking either
danger to a specific human [First Law] or the higher needs of all of
humanity [Zeroth Law]). Moreover, his ethical programming is *not*
fundamental to his design (his prototype, Lore, lacks it altogether, and
Data's ethical program is turned off for much of "Descent, part II").
Asimov stated that Roddenberry asked for his permission to make Data a
positronic robot after the fact. Asimov himself had no input into the
There were plans to have Asimov appear on the show as a holodeck
simulation and talk to Data (just as Stephen Hawking did). A combination
of Asimov's location and ill-health made this impossible.