“If you define him as a human being, then he can give orders that might wreck an expensive machine. On the other hand, if you don’t define the five-year-old as human, then the robot is under no compulsion to refrain from harming the child.”
He began delving into his pockets for smoking materials as he went on.
“We took the easy way out. We solved that problem by keeping Snookums isolated. He has never met any animal except adult human beings. It would take an awful lot of explaining to make him understand the difference between, say, a chimpanzee and a man. Why should a hairy pelt and a relatively low intelligence make a chimp non-human? After all, some men are pretty hairy, and some are moronic.
“Present company excepted.”
More laughter. Mike’s opinion of Fitzhugh was beginning to go up. The man knew when to break pedantry with humor.
“Finally,” Fitzhugh said, when the laughter had subsided, “we must ask what is meant by ‘protecting his own existence.’ Frankly, we’ve been driven frantic by that one. The little humanoid, caterpillar-track mechanism that we all tend to think of as Snookums isn’t really Snookums, any more than a human being is a hand or an eye. Snookums wouldn’t actually be threatening his own existence unless his brain—now in the hold of the William Branchell—is destroyed.”
As Dr. Fitzhugh continued, Mike the Angel listened with about half an ear. His attention—and the attention of every man in the place—had been distracted by the entrance of Leda Crannon. She stepped in through a side door, walked over to Dr. Fitzhugh, and whispered something in his ear. He nodded, and she left again.
Fitzhugh, when he resumed his speech, was rather more hurried in his delivery.
“The whole thing can be summed up rather quickly.
“Point One: Snookums’ brain contains the information that eight years of hard work have laboriously put into it. That information is more valuable than the whole cost of the William Branchell; it’s worth billions. So the robot can’t be disassembled, or the information would be lost.