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The second law states that:

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

But it says nothing about property. What if a robot owned by someone is given an order by someone else?

Surely if the same person gives contradictory orders, the last one will be executed:

Move that box upstairs. Wait no, just put it on the porch.

But what if a robot is carrying groceries outside, and someone says:

Hey you, stop what you're doing and take those groceries to my apartment.

It shouldn't agree to do that.

So, do people just say "Only obey me" when they buy a robot? Does that mean a robot ignores every order by non-owners, even if it's small help like helping an old lady cross the road? The robot would have to tell between harmless orders from strangers and orders that cause non-physical harm (like stealing their stuff, smashing their car, etc.)

If a households owns a robot, they'll say something like "Only obey me and my family", then what if orders contradict between family members?

How does it work exactly? Is it just managed by some part of the AI less fundamental than the 3 rules?

_{I've never read Asimov, sorry if it's explained in the first chapter of the first book. I didn't see it discussed anywhere.}

As far as I can recall, he doesn't. It's important to remember that Asimov was writing the robot stories for Astounding and his readers liked logical puzzles, surprise consequences and clever gimmicks -- none of which would be present in a simple story of two different people telling a robot to do two different things.

The closest I recall, is it "Robot AL-76 Goes Astray" where a robot built for use on the Moon for some reason gets lost is the back woods. It invents a disintegration tool, causes some havoc and is told by someone to get rid of the disintegrator and forget about building more. When the robot's finally found, the owners want to know how it built the disintegrator, but it can't help -- it's forgotten everything.

This wasn't a case of contradictory orders, but it was an order by an unauthorized person.

The answer to this question depends strongly on the level of sophistication of the robot. The robot stories (almost all of them were short stories, aside from the novel-length The Bicentennial Man) covered an internal time span of centuries -- even though the core of the stories involved Susan Calvin from her graduate days until her old age.

Early on, robots weren't "smart" enough to know the difference between sensible orders and nonsensical ones. Later, they reached a level of sophistication where the could debate amongst themselves exactly what constitutes a human -- and conclude that they are more qualified for that moniker than any of these biological entities. Somewhere in between, Second Law developed into some level of qualification relative to the order giver (orders from small children and known incompetents could be ignored). It was out of this latter capability that robots eventually decided that concerns for harm of humans (and humanity) overrode all their orders -- humans must be protected from themselves to the point where they were all declared incompetent to give orders to a robot.

There was a case in the short story 'Runaround' where a robot had two conflicting objectives. In this case, it was because he was built with an extra-strong Third Law, so could not decide between obeying human orders and self-preservation. He essentially tries to satisfy both conditions, running circles a safe distance from his dangerous destination, and otherwise acting erratic and drunk.

I would think a similar thing would happen in the case of two conflicting orders. The robot would do what it could to satisfy both, but could become stuck if it was impossible. In the above story, the deadlock is resolved when the human operators put themselves in danger, thus invoking the First Law. I would think in most cases committing a crime would be considered a minor violation of the First Law, so smart enough robots would try to avoid it. But as Zeiss mentioned, it would really depend on the model of robot.

Consider, all Robots stories are short stories or novellas published during a very long time spawn, so they are not 100% coherent among themselves sometimes, though the overall framework is.

As highlighted in the comments, Positronic brains reaction to orders, situations and environment is generally described in-universe as the outcome of the "potentials" induced by them on the 3 Laws. There is no AI at work as we know it today for the Robot to decide to do something or not, but more like a compulsion towards a generic line of action, driven by priorities between the laws and the Robot understanding of his surroundings. To give you an idea, there is some discussion in one of the stories if I remember well on a potential scenario where a strong enough order, repeated continuously under different wording and reinforced with information on how negative would it be for the person issuing it if not followed, could have potentially led to a breach of First Law by simple buildup of potential on Second Law adherence. The idea is rejected as impossible in practice, but it is discussed.

Also take into account there is an in-universe evolution on how Laws are enforced by design; in the first stories, which are supposed to take place earlier in-universe, Laws are rigid, literal absolutes with no space for interpretation. As in-universe timeline progresses, they become more flexible and open to interpretation by the Robot, in part as an attempt by US Robotics to prevent scenarios such as a third party ordering a Robot to, for instance, “get that bike and throw it to the river”, when the bike owner is not present to negate the order.

This flexibility is often presented as a re-interpretation of First Law, where “damaging a human” is originally presented as implying exclusively physical damage, and it slowly includes the concept of mental damage or distress. Under this implementation of the First Law, breaking it is to build up enough negative potential vs. it as per Robot understanding of human mind and social conventions, which leads to amusing side-effects (read the books!).

So the bike will not be thrown to the river because the robot guesses the owner will not like it (negative potential vs. First Law).

So, what does all this rambling mean to your question:

• An early Robot will tend to do as ordered literally if there is no
  evident violation of First Law, or a violation of a stronger previous
  order. A way to protect your Robot from abuse would be to issue a
  second order in strong terms not to obey counter-orders. This will
  generate two positive potentials a single counter-order will find
  difficult to overrule.


• A later Robot will tend to be more mindful of negative psychological
  impact of following an order or taking a course of action, which
  leads to amusing side-effects (seriously, read the books!).


• Any Robot of whichever period, faced with a situation where
  contradictory lines of action will have the same potential on all
  Laws, or inevitably break First Law (later interpreted as leading to
  a negative high enough potential vs. it, not necessarily implying
  physical damage), will enter a loop looking for an impossible
  solution and be blocked.