Did you know that Isaac Asimov wrote about the problem of robot sycophancy already back in 1941?

[riley@toot.cat]

Did you know that Isaac Asimov wrote about the problem of robot sycophancy already back in 1941?

https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/SF/AST/AST_1941_05.pdf (from page 43 onwards).

[riley@toot.cat]

And, of course, his proposed solution involved having the robot try and untangle a logical contradiction. Doing physical violence to a robot is, after all, evil, but exploiting one's design flaws to inflict permanent emotional damage to a robot was seen as perfectly acceptable in these bygone barbaric times.