CANBERRA – Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel has called on governments around the world to introduce an AI stamp of approval to guarantee that artificial intelligence devices produced in their countries are for peaceful purposes.

He’d like to have it called the Asimov stamp, recognising the late science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, several of whose stories imagined the introduction of robot laws to ensure robots could not harm humans.

The three laws were introduced in his 1942 story Run Around, and included in the 1950 collection I, Robot.

According to Finkel, introduction of such a stamp would give consumers trust that the AI in a device had been developed according to specified global standards.

He said AI devices in recent times have “been taking human jobs, they’ve been helping police work out who might commit crimes in the future, they’ve been implicated in more than a handful of botch-ups, they’ve learnt from our bad habits and absorbed some unpleasant ideas. They’ve made some of us very, very afraid.”

Finkel added: “Obviously, the rules have to change. The rules have to evolve for all AI and they have to be enforced.”