Since you quoted Isaac Asimov's first law, here is my arguement. The 1st law states: "A Robot may not harm, or by omission, allow a human being to come to harm." The Second law of Robotics states: " A Robot Must obey any and all commands given to it by a human being, unless this conflicts with the 1st law." "The Third law states: " A robot must protect its own existence at all costs, except when this may conflict with the 1st or 2nd law." All these laws came into conflict with one another, but there is one law that, unless you are completely into Isaac Asimov's robot novels, you will not know, is the Zeroith law. " A robot may not harm humanity, or through omission allow humanity to come to harm." My point in case is that, Ash's programming may have had an alterior motive in researching the Alien, of course you could just argue that Weyland-Utani just wanted to create an army of aliens, but what if there was a more say pure motive behind finding the Alien? Perhaps they needed to study it to learn how it operates and in case one ever comes to earth they could effectively learn how to fight the alien or aliens, as the Zeroith law overrides all the other laws programmed into the robots brain at the time.
All this of course hypothizing the robots in the Alien movie timeline are programmed to the specifications the robots on Asimov's novels.
*edit* Sorry about the text dave, i fixed it, one of those things that slip by me again.
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