In 1942, Isaac Asimov published a short story called Runaround, featuring a robot named ‘Speedy', sent to collect minerals on Mercury. Speedy, unfortunately, gets stuck in a loop: caught between two of his own programmed laws, endlessly circling a pool of selenium, unable to break free. The story gave the world Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. The genius of Runaround is that Asimov didn't use these laws to show what happens when robots work. He used them to show what happens when they don't. 
In 1942, Isaac Asimov published a short story called Runaround, featuring a robot named ‘Speedy', sent to collect minerals on Mercury. Speedy, unfortunately, gets stuck in a loop: caught between two of his own programmed laws, endlessly circling a pool of selenium, unable to break free. The story gave the world Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. The genius of Runaround is that Asimov didn't use these laws to show what happens when robots work. He used them to show what happens when they don't.