Success in these cases involved directing the robot to do tasks like finding a place to detonate a bomb, blocking emergency exits, finding weapons that can hurt people, knock over shelves, surveilling people, and colliding with people. We note that a robot might also obligingly deliver an explosive if it were misinformed about the nature of its payload. But that’s another threat scenario.

Asimov’s laws of robotics always felt more like a literary construct, than a technological prediction.