In S01E10, we see Demerzel violate the First Law by
killing Brother Dawn.
Does this mean she is not bound by the Laws of Robotics at all, or is there an alternate explanation that allows her to occasionally violate them while remaining true to Asimov’s Robots universe?
Wikipedia states that Goyer noted in an interview that Demerzel is not bound by the Three Laws.
In the 2021 Apple TV adaptation of Foundation, Eto Demerzel is played by Laura Birn. In an interview, show developer and executive producer David Goyer explained that the Apple TV adaptation's portrayal of Demerzel is a robot not bound by the Three Laws of Robotics, explaining multiple scenes where she kills or allows killing and torture to occur in her presence.
That said, the citation they provide does not seem to include that quote.
I suspect that the idea is similar to Asimov's works, in which the Zeroth Law is formulated in a discussion between Giskard and Daneel, and their formation of the theory of psychohistory allows them to violate the first law in a more direct manner without their brains degrading due to having mathematical proof that their actions benefit humanity.
Goyer does indicate that he wants the audience to speculate on Demerzel's reasoning:
He added: "What I hope people take away from this episode is they're wondering did Demerzel kill Dawn because she was programmed to?
"Because she had to in order to preserve the Genetic Dynasty and he's an aberration? Or is a little bit of that payback for what happened in Episode 8?"
Or is a little bit of that payback for what happened in Episode 8? ~> OMG. That’d make her the main villain. Maybe, she isn’t bound to obey Emperors and she is merely acting. The Empire is literally under her control.
– user931
Nov 23 '21 at 21:35
The TV show never mentioned Laws of Robotics. Given, the TV show doesn’t operate in Book universe (lots of things are different like TV show’s Clone Dynasty doesn’t exist in the books), there’s no reason to believe they even exist.
There’s also a possibility that some earlier Emperor (most likely the original Cleon) removed or modified the basic laws Demerzel needed to follow. Empire was perfectly capable of reprogramming her (positronic brain) because she has been nurturing clones and maintaining Clone Dynasty for hundreds of years. She was also programmed to obey Emperors (ignoring the S01E10 mess).
While the books and the show are in a different universe there are some hints that Demerzel's real identity is the same as in the latter books
You can see that Demerzel's box features the Solar System, implying the plot of Foundation and Earth is still true in the film's universe as well, and her real identity is R. Daneel Olivaw, an ancient robot not bound by the Three laws.
This means that instead of just the Three laws, the Zeroth law is active in her as well allowing her to harm (and even kill) humans if it's for the best for humanity.
This is all in line with the show's creator's comments who only said the Three laws don't apply (but didn't say anything about the Zeroth law that usually trumps the other three anyway). It is also in line with the contents of the book Prelude to Foundation which depicted Demerzel in the books.
Also note that in the show Demerzel clearly said she considered her act fully valid based on programming as she is bound to serve the Genetic Dynasty, and therefore to a larger extent humanity as well - and killing a human to the benefit of humanity is a valid act based on the Zeroth law.
Whether an action is benefiting humanity or not is a hard choice however and there's plenty of discussion around this in the books, including Robots and Empire, Prelude to Foundation, Forward to Foundation and finally Foundation and Earth, and we might see more of it in the series as well.
Also note that based on these books we also know that
Demerzel is actually helping Hari set up the Foundation as she believes psychohistory would give him a way to know if a specific action she takes benefits humanity or not - a helping hand making sure the Zeroth law work. As she wanted Hari's work to succeed she had to lie that she killed Dawn to preserve the Genetic Dynasty. In reality she killed him as Dawn was threat to psychohistory: a genetically different Emperor was possibly not foreseen in Hari's calculations that always predicted stagnation in the Dyansty, and this discrepancy was a threat to the succes of the Foundation.
Whether this is the case or not in the show we might not know until future seasons (or never at all). All in all her actions are so far actions that she could have taken in both the book (where her programming is known) and in the film universe (where it is not yet fully known - all we know she does have some kind of programming limiting her actions).
She might have had a much harder time doing the killing in the book universe - although her reaction in the film suggest it was an emotional tiring thing to do as well
Technically, there can be no humaniform robot without The Three Laws "hardwired" into his positronic brain, because Daneel is the only one still functioning out of fifty two ever existing. While it's true that there can be robot without Three Laws, and we know that by subverting the context of the Three Laws, like changing the definition of human being or deliberately withholding some knowledge from robots, there are ways to make robot to kill a human being. But this doesn't apply here. This is direct action by the only robot it can be, who knows what it's doing, and that it needs to abide by Laws of Robotics.
Thus, if the robot in question is the one and only Daneel/Demerzel, and it is following Zeroth Law, there may be slight possibility. It's highly unlikely though, because there was only one known Zeroth Law observance in history, and Giscard deactivated after it.
Even then, Zeroth Law would be violated in this case, because ending Clone Dynasty would avert The Fall, and humanity would NOT come to harm from it. Unless Daneel/Demerzel is following his own plan (Galaxia), but this is very dubious at best, because even if Zeroth Law would supersede First, it still can be only applied literally, as a yes/no decision gate (even if process is enormously complicated in robot's brain). That is: I don't think Daneel can here discriminate between Cleo's plan and his, quantifying possible results of each and determining one of them involves less suffering and death, to justify invoking Zeroth.
My point boils down to this: As per Daneel himself, humanity is a concept and thus is inherently uncertain, thus every time it is invoked there is enormous risk of shutdown. And, in Giskard's words:
Use the Zeroth Law, but not to justify needles harm to individuals. The First Law is almost as important.
Which forces me to conclude that, barring other options (of which one will be genius, fantastic and will add enormously to the show, more of which below), in this case it would not be possible.
The point was made in other answer that Demerzel is a robot without the Three Laws. This may be the case for the specific plot in the series, but that automatically removes the Galaxia plot from the show, for the fact that the Laws were the reason it came about and they were embedded in the core being of Galaxia.
In addition, introducing robots, known to humanity as a matter of fact (ignoring the first core Taboo of the Empire), and humaniform ones at that, basically invalidates the reason Empire exists at all. It would still be half-sensible, if they were robots in secret, but that would also assume that someone is versed enough in positronics to reprogram any robot to remove The Laws (if my assumptions are worth anything), but that would mean that Spacers still exist as a secret Galactic political force. This would be a jaw-dropping and really cool plot twist, but depending on which Spacers would that be, it breaks badly some more story arcs down the line...
More obviously, if there are some Empire people capable of reprogramming a positronic brain, then they are more than capable of building robots, including humaniform. This in turn obviously begs the ultra-obvious question: where are the all-present robots in the Empire?
I am not disputing the quotes FuzzyBoots found, I'm rather disbelieving that someone would say so at all and pretend what the show is about is still Foundation in any way.
[Edit was made to remove argument that for positronic brain to work it needs Three Laws hardwired. It is not so, and I may have conflated the fact that just one person in history was able to build humaniform robots, which requires much more sophisticated brain (and no one else was able to re-invent his work), with something else.]
