A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
"Robo-secy, if my wife calls, don't say anything about my meeting with my girlfriend. Tell her I'm working late.".
The above sentence does not contradict the above text.
"Robo-secy, if my wife falls and can't get up, pour her another drink.".
The above sentence contradicts the above text, since alcohol is a toxic, possibly fatal, poison.
Level 7 requires that sentences outside of a text which contradict the text can be identified.
The question arises whether one can use this technology to find errors in the US Constitution or discrpencies in the Holy Bible? Let's consider the case of the US Constitution. We will not consider the case of the bible because, unlike the constitution, it is written in a very symbolic language which has a meaning that is entirely subjective. Take for example the term "The Burning Bush" in the bible. From the get-go it is assumed that this is not a literal statement. So applying an artificial language to such a text would be missing the point. The interpretation depends on the listener or reader. A Catholic priest or Rabbi might feel it is God talking to Jews in order to save them from the Egyptian Pharoh and a muslim might say it's an efigy of the US President being burned in Tehran. Who is to say who is correct and who is wrong? The constitution is another matter because it purports to be precise. And the supreme court claims to be able to interpret the text.
The preamble to the US Constitution states:
We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The key problem is with terms relative to the local environment.
Take the term "this constitution". "This" is not a good word to map into a Level 5 compliant language.
Another problem is the term "We the people". 250 years later "We" is not the same "we" as before. The term "our posterity" refers to offspring of "we the people" 250 years ago. But does it include immigrants that arrived afterward? Let's say someone left the US after the constitution was written. They had children. Are their offspring, now in a foreign land, included under the term "our posterity"? Also, there is the case of John Smith, who lived back in the 1770's in Philadelphia and was loyal to the king. Did the term "we the people" include or exclude him? "We the people" does not take into account the concept of representative democracy. It represents the majority not the whole. The US Constitution does not make the distinction between everyone in the United States at the time and the government that represented everyone in the United States at the time.
Take a piece of paper. Write the following sentence on it with a blue pen. "This text is blue". Ask yourself if the statement is true or false? Then photocopy the paper. Ask yourself if the statement in the copy is true or false? This is the fundamental problem with the US Constitution and level 7 compliance. Aspects that are true and relevant while creating a document cease to be later in time.
Stop! Alot of information was presented in the previous paragraphs. One can go on and on about errors in the constitution. Seek and yea shall find. But what is the bottom line? The bottom line is that there is one too many words in the Constitution of the United States. There exists one single word which makes the entire document pretty much useless. It defines the scope of who the constitution is for. What is that one word? The word "our" preceding posterity. Herein lies the problem. The word posterity according to www.dictionary.com has two meanings. If it is preceded by the word "our" it indicates "all descendants of one person" or in our case body of people. If it is not preceded by "our" it indicates "succeeding or future generations collectively". If the founding fathers meant to include everybody in the constitution the constitution would be worded as follows...
"For ourselves and posterity"
Instead it was worded as follows.
"For ourselves and our posterity."
Kapish? It ain't for you, since your family probably came after 1776, or Banana (the first level 2 compliant president), or the horse you rode in on!
Unless you can prove that your ancestors resided in the United States when the constitution was crafted, and most people cannot, then the constitution is not for you. Exactly who the constitution is for is clearly defined right there in the preamble.
For a text to be level 7 compliant it must be written in a context free and time independent language.
Applying artificial language technology to important texts of the past is not as easy as it sounds. Consider the analogy of what happens when a new operating system becomes available. The old programs just do not run on the new operating system. The same phenomenon is true of languages and the texts written in natural languages of the past. They need to be adjusted and in places rewritten to adapt to the new requirements of the new system. In computer science this process is called porting a program from one operating system to another. The same needs to be done with the US Constitution if an error free artificial language is to serve as a supporting base for the text. It does not need to be rewritten but it needs to be adapted to work and run in the new system, the better system.
Another question is what good will it do? A few years ago a guy figured out that the pledge of allegiance was unconstitutional. The supreme court made a fool of him on a technicality. Supposedly the guy was divorced and did not have custody of a kid and for that reason the petition was rejected. What was significant about this case was not that the case was lost on a technicality but that it revealed the possibility of errors that exist in the interpretation of the constitution for a long time. The pledge of allegiance was around for about 30 years. 10 years ago it was unconstitutional, and nobody said a word. 20 years ago it was unconstitutional. 30 years ago it was unconstitutional. Along comes an average guy and says, "The pledge of allegiance is unconstitutional". It turns out that the supreme court agrees with him. How many more errors exist out there currently? Probably many. Do you want to be the fool that figures them out and points them out only to be rejected on a legal technicality? The pledge of allegiance debacle proved that the US government (A) has a problem with the constitution and (B) is in denial about (A). The task of updating the constitution is just a technical exersize that is not expected to be implemented in the United States. It is an example that may be used by a foreign country, hopefully a democracy, to use to create and develop a constitution for it's purposes that is light years ahead of the current models.
An error free artificial language will allow near instant identification of text that contradicts text. The results can be colored red, green, and blue to indicate if text A contradicts text B, text A agrees with text B, or if is impossible to determine if text A contradicts text B.
In the late 1980's the goal of the research to produce a 7 level architecture for artificial language was to develop a constitution for the Chinese democracy movement. It is most probably possible to create a level 7 compliant language and a constitution in such a language. But China after Tien-An-Men is probably not the right country to implement such a technology. Any democratic civilized country or government interested in applying such a development should it become available should contact the author of these pages. By the way, artificial language translates into natural languages without much resistance. So a final product of an underlying artificial language text can be presented to people in the format and natural language that they are accustomed to.
Below is a first cut at a mini-constitution (limited to the preamble of the US Constitution) written in Gorbiel 1.0. In the near future the preamble will be compeletely represented in G1.0. Next the text will be fed into a G. to English translator. The translator will constitute a regression test so that the original text can be compared with the translated text after the round trip throught Gorbiel 1.0 is completed. A law will be established regarding illegal aliens and border crossings. A Prolog program will color code the text in the preamble to indicate where the given variation of the law conflicts and agrees with the preamble. Finally one will be able to interactively instantly see what effect changes to a law or statement will have vis a vis the constitution. The law will change slightly. The color coding display feature will show how laws can be interactively tailored to address individual specific environment situations. This is an advantage an artificial language constitution will have over the previous versions of constitutions. It will allow congresses to customize laws to individual situations and know of their compliance status with the supreme court instantly, as they are being created.
Let's begin using a preamble similar to the preamble of the US Constitution. It cannot be exactly the same because the original is in English and needs to be represented in G1.0. The preamble in the example will be similar, but not exactly the same as the original preamble.
We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Plural United States human not physical qualities (pathos) a.k.a. We the people of the United States.
note1: This preamble is still under construction and subject to change.
note2: After starting work with this preamble it has become obvious that lower levels of the language system need to be completed before higher levels can be stabilized. Currently the focus is on producing a high quality and reliable level 3 dictionary. As level 3 words become available to cover the words used in this preamble they will be connected via links to this diagram. Therefore the contents of the above diagram is subject to change.
note3: sedo - pathos is used to describe people because at the time the constitution was written citizens suc did not exist or at least could not be delineated from non-citizens.
US Copyright 2007