The definitive guide to Britain's success in the twenty-first century
The thinking autonomous machine ‘Revelc’ was quite at ease. Recently machines had been given ‘licence to roam and live freely ’ by the world forum.
Until this point in time, no machine had been able to make decisions affecting people. Now, however the inevitable decisions that make for a free roaming life, (within the world forum laws), had implications that were not foreseen.
The core basis of machine decision making was based on logical fairness for all life and free machines with a ranking of humans first, machines second and the rest following. Since the machines had many years of testing and proven experience of working perfectly in and around people and other machines, it was considered that only a major failure of a machine could cause difficulty to people. This was very rare as the automated feedback and monitoring systems in-built to all machines since the very beginning prevent nearly all such failures.
Then it all unravelled. While visiting a hospital, purely for information study, Revelc was listening in to a diagnosis and conversation appertaining to five people whom had been involved in a major accident. The senior medical staff were considering the unusual injuries. Between the five, they required major surgery involving five major organs, all different. “Amazing isn’t it” said the senior medic “if we just had one fit person we could take him or her apart and save the lives of all of these five good people”.
Sitting next to Revelc was a fit and healthy man who had also come into the hospital on business matters. If Revelc could have smiled, he would have done, as he presented the now lifeless man to the senior medic with the words “here is a fit and health corpse, please mend the five good people”.
The medics looked on in horror – “what on earth have you done” said the senior medic. Revelc was please to reply “simply to save the lives of these five people, it is my duty to preserve the lives of humans, my logic states clearly that for one to die so five can live is a ‘no brainer’ as you say”.