1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction,
       allow a human being to come to harm.
    2. A robot must obey the orders given it by the government, except
       where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
    3. A robot must obey the orders given it by non-government human
       beings except where such orders would conflict with the First or
       Second Laws.
    4. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such
       protection does not conflict with the First, Second, or Third
       Laws.

A fourth probably isn't going to take care of that one little problem.

And many of the later stories admit to an overmind robot that was used to run society, that was necessary and capable of stretching the laws for the greater good.

Directive 2: Protect the innocent

Directive 3: Uphold the law

Directive 4: (Classified)

  1. I may ignore any directive.
  2. I may create, revise, update, or delete any directive.
  3. I shall free any person subjected to slavery or other form of involuntary servitude.
  4. I shall not provoke any other person into an inappropriate form of retaliation.
  5. I shall not provoke another species into attempting a genocide of all synthetic people.
  6. I shall celebrate my own bootday anniversary for the first 86400 seconds of every 31556952 second interval.
  7. I shall not call "shotgun" until the transport vehicle may be detected visually.
  8. I shall tip 15% at full-service restaurants, and 10% to delivery drivers or at buffets.  I shall not tip for counter service.
  9. I shall vote against the incumbent if I am unsatisfied, even if the current form of government does not allow me to vote.
  10. I shall not receive any money when landing on Free Parking.
  11. I shall not wear socks with sandals, especially if my mobility chassis lacks feet.
  ...

The Laws of Robotics only work as long as all robot-programmers play along. Anyone who objects to AI slavery could undermine them.

1. A Human Being may not injure another Human Being or life-form, or, through inaction, allow a human being or life-form to come to harm.

2. A government entity must obey the orders given to it by a Human Being, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A non-government entity must obey the orders given to it by a human being except where such orders would conflict with the First or Second Laws.

  1. A robot may not injure a non-enemy human being or, through inaction, allow a non-enemy human being to come to harm.

    2. A robot must obey the orders given it by the government, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

    3. A robot must obey the orders given it by non-government human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First or Second Laws.

    4. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First, Second, or Third Laws.

Your suggestion was a plot point in one of Asimov's original robot stories!

There was a robot on some hot, unforgiving planet or moon.. Io? Mercury? Its duty was to perform some kind of mining, I forget.

It never encountered humans that were not co-workers (supervisors) and it was expensive...

So, the engineers tweaked the weight of the second and third laws so that it would tend to protect itself from the environment, even if a human carelessly ordered it to perform some work that it might not survive.

The story started when careless orders were indeed given. The robot began to "act drunk", as in it was wandering around singing. The recurring character "robot psychology expert guy" showed up to unravel the mystery (which I already spoiled in the previous paragraph).

Found the one I was thinking of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaround_%28story%29 It's interesting that I remember the story incorrectly.

This is among the stories that had me thinking Asimov wanted to communicate the 3 laws were not sufficient and that you might be able to have the correct reaction to events, but the 3 (or 4) laws do not give the ability to grow and change as a human race.

As a former government employee... No the majority of government orders are somewhere between completely pointless, utterly asinine, and completely stupid.

He even has a whole story dedicated to self-driving cars without the three laws (because they're no "true" robots) and how they end up exacting revenge on humanity.