One of science fiction's greatest writers warned us about a AI. Does he also hold the remedy? Alan Finkel

'Implementing these laws on AI would be difficult, but the stakes are existential and therefore the effort is worthwhile,' writes Alan Finkel Photograph: Alexey Kotelnikov/Alamy'Implementing these laws on AI would be difficult, but the stakes are existential and therefore the effort is worthwhile,' writes Alan Finkel Photograph: Alexey Kotelnikov/Alamy One of science fiction's greatest writers warned us about AI. Could his ideas help us avoid a dystopian future? What might a modern day equivalent of Isaac Asimov's laws of robotics look like? Fri 7 Aug 2026 00.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 7 Aug 2026 11.29 EDT Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk predicted in July that legions of AI-powered robots would dominate the physical world and that AI might not take orders from people any more. He also offered an alternative vision in which there would be agreement for a collective objective to make AI benign by imbuing it with a love of the truth and a desire for humanity to prosper, and that governments might have to enforce this objective.