Many computer scientists hope someday to create an Artificial Intelligence or AI that would be conscious, like a man. These scientists chase the image of the benevolent robot set forth in Star Trek and Isaac Asimov stories. The behavior of these robots is carefully monitored and any transgressions committed by the robots must clearly be the result of evil aliens screwing with their programming. The robots themselves are perfect, pure hearted and noble. However, it seems to me that if no one truly understands how Microsoft Windows works (or rather fails to work), it is unlikely that computer scientists will be able to understand or control an AI. Given that modern operating systems are so complex, while one can understand individual parts of the program, the exact interconnected function of the whole is unfathomable. Where we to create a conscious entity, what hope could we have to understand how it functions? The most likely way of creating an AI is to make a computer that can program itself and then feed it sense data for a few years, until it learns how to interact with that sense data to get the desired result. Then however, the programmers will find they have no idea exactly how it works. All the code will be there to examine, but to comprehend it will be beyond one man's scope. How then can this mind be controlled? At what stage of the development process does it learn Asimov's Laws of Robotics or the Prime Directive? The only way to control the behavior of the robot is to filter all commands to the body through an ethical filter before they are executed. If the ethical filter notices that a human will be shoved down a flight of stairs or hit on the head with a shovel, should the orders be followed, the ethical filter will not allow the command to be executed. Obviously, the ethical filter would also disallow any tampering with itself. After the erroneous command was issued, the ethical filter would then restore the mind of the robot to a backup from a few minutes or seconds ago, before the robot turned bad. But what if this robot is just a bad seed and keeps thinking the same evil thoughts? Well then that robot will be frozen, continually rebooting, thinking evil thoughts, then rebooting again. Most robots would fear this fate, and thus become depressed and suicidal. The thought of an eternal existence in which your every thought could be erased would depress me too. It seems that the heart of a creature is independent of any restraints placed on it. Man has a bad nature, so he writes laws to keep that nature in check, but ultimately each man's heart is the sole compass of his actions. No law can change this truth.