Drunk robot
In 1942, Astounding Science Fiction published a short story by a young Isaac Asimov.
Called Runaround, the story tells the tale of two miners facing death on the planet Mercury. Accompanied by a robot named ‘Speedy’, the men realize their life support systems are failing.
To save themselves, they send Speedy outside to gather the selenium needed to replenish their life support. Instead of returning, Speedy runs in circles talking gibberish, as though he were drunk.
The men realize the selenium may be harmful to Speedy, his ‘drunkenness’ a feedback loop of cognitive dissonance.
The cause?
A conflict in The Three Laws.
The Three Laws of Robotics
Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are:
- 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 Laws.
Speedy’s confusion is a conflict between the Second and Third Laws — Speedy unable to decide whether to follow the Second Law by obeying orders, or follow the Third Law and protect himself from danger.
The men break the cycle by forcing Speedy to follow the First Law — they go outside and expose themselves to danger to trigger Speedy’s protective instinct.
It worked.
They lived.
The Zeroth Law
In 1985, Asimov added a fourth law “above all the others” — the ‘Zeroth Law’ — designed to protect all of humanity, not just individuals:
- A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
Asimov was ahead of his time — in December 2025, five months after releasing a plan to accelerate the development of AI, the Trump administration turned to robots, with an executive order likely due in 2026.
AI and robotics point to the next major front in America’s race against China, with Goldman Sachs estimating the global market for humanoids reaching $38 billion by 2035.
…Looking ahead, the ethics of Asimov’s laws are perhaps even more valid today than they were in 1942.
The red pill
In today’s social media landscape, the social media giants are centralized, hoarding petabytes of our personal data. This fuels data breaches, bias and billions in ad revenue at our expense.
That’s wrong, right?
Decentralization should be a choice — like Neo and the red pill.
That’s why we founded allgram.
allgram’s about social media where people are creators, not products.
At allgram, your data’s decentralized — stored on the blockchain, wrapped in triple-encryption, injected with agentic AI.
With us, there are no data silos or surveillance capitalism — just pure, user-owned expression.
The Three Laws of Data
allgram isn’t just about tech either.
We’re about ethics, a movement toward trust, equity and innovation — a world empowering people to connect without pause or compromise.
In our decentralized world, your data is yours.
To ensure this, we designed and obey three laws of our own — The Three Laws of Data.
The First Law
The individual is sole owner and sovereign controller of their data. A system may not collect, store, process or share an individual’s personal data unless explicitly authorized by that individual through verifiable and revocable consent.
The Second Law
A system must store and process personal data in a fully decentralized manner — unless doing so would violate the First Law, or place the individual’s data at greater risk than a secure centralized alternative explicitly approved by the individual.
The Third Law
A system must protect the individual’s data against unauthorized access, leakage, inference or re-identification. The system must enable the individual to permanently delete or withdraw their data at any time, provided such protection and deletion do not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Data must be human-centered
Our Three Laws are human-centered, designed to ensure data flows freely yet securely, untainted by big corporates and algorithmic overlords.
The Three Laws place people — not corporations, governments or algos — at the center of the data universe.
At allgram, privacy isn’t an afterthought, but the engine driving everything we do:
- Nothing happens without your informed permission — ever.
- Whenever possible, the data never leaves your direct control.
- We lock your data down with state-of-the-art protection — and can be erased on demand.
Ultimately, everything we do is governed by The Three Laws of Data.
At allgram, your data is yours.
Postscript: I, Robot and The Matrix
Asimov’s Three Laws appeared onscreen in 2005.
I, Robot was set in 2035, a world where robots serve humanity. The movie centers around a Chicago detective investigating a robot suspected of murder.
The movie starred Will Smith, seventeen years before the Oscars slap.
Seven years before I, Robot, Smith turned down the role of Neo in The Matrix. Keanu Reeves got the gig, chose the red pill and the rest is movie history.
