A robot which has the capacity to decide it will inflict pain on humans has been invented - breaking one of the standard rules for artificial intelligence. From Will Smith movie I, Robot, one of the laws of robotics is commonly considered to be that it cannot injure humans. But scientists and artist Alexander Reben has invented "The First Law", a robot named for the very rule it breaks. The basic robot is programmed to be capable of pricking a human's finger. However, as Mr Reben is intending to provoke discussion on AI, The First Law will not'decide' to inflict pain every time.

The threat of killer robots may sound a little far-fetched but this latest'harmful robot' suggests we may have taken a step closer to this dystopian reality. Roboticist Alexander Reben from the University of Berkeley, California, has created a bot called "The First Law" that is capable of pricking a finger, but is programmed to choose not to every time if it means avoiding being switched off. Ultimately, it can decide whether or not to inflict pain to serve its own interest. The robot is named after the first law in a set of rules devised by sci-fi author Isaac Asimov, which - quoted as being from the Handbook of Robotics, 2058 AD – states "a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm". Reben's research paper explains how the robot operates in relation to "reinforcement learning agents" and how they are unlikely to behave optimally all the time.