system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Asimov] Some questions about the 3 laws.

In "Lost Little Robot," one of the Susan Calvin stories, there's a situation where the 1st law has to be truncated to allow robots who work closely with humans in high-radiation environments to do let the humans do their jobs while taking an acceptable risk. We learn that the 1st law kept kicking in and that robots kept "rescuing" the humans from the radiation, even though the humans were taking reasonable precautions to negate the danger. 

Why wouldn't this have been a problem before? We do a lot of things, including a lot of things depicted in Asimov's Robot stories, that have an inherent, if small risk of harm. Things like spaceflight, or even navigating the expressways could all bring harm, and we don't see robots intervening in any of these cases. Why not? Why is it gamma radiation specific?

Further, as our own culture gets closer to using machines that are capable of "thought," how realistic is implementation of the 3 laws? Would they work IRL? Would it be useful to build robots this way?
gpt
There are several factors in play here:

1. First and foremost is actual versus potential harm. The robots were protecting the humans from actual (albeit low levels) of harm. Gamma radiation physically and actively destroys your cells as you are exposed to it and the robots knew this. Compare this to risky behavior that merely invites the chance (however high) of harm that has not yet occurred.

2. Second is awareness. The robots in this story had to be specifically programmed with knowledge of radiation. Sans that specific knowledge, they wouldn't understand that harm would be occurring.

3. Lastly, robots at this time were not commonplace. A common theme was humanity's bigotry toward robots. They were only in use on Earth in limited and specific areas, and quickly banished from Earth altogether.