<i>SPOILERS FOR WORKS OF ASIMOV</i><p>Your suggestion was a plot point in one of Asimov&#x27;s original robot stories!<p>There was a robot on some hot, unforgiving planet or moon..  Io?  Mercury?  Its duty was to perform some kind of mining, I forget.<p>It never encountered humans that were not co-workers (supervisors) and it was expensive...<p>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.<p>The story started when careless orders were indeed given.  The robot began to &quot;act drunk&quot;, as in it was wandering around singing.  The recurring character &quot;robot psychology expert guy&quot; showed up to unravel the mystery (which I already spoiled in the previous paragraph).