I mean, they were never designed to work, they were designed to pose interesting dilemmas for Susan Calvin and to torment Powell and Donovan (though it's arguable that once robots get advanced enough, as in R. Daniel, for instance, they do work, as long as you don't mind aliens being genocided galaxy-wide).

The in-world reason for the laws, though, to allay the Frankenstein complex, and to make robots safe, useful, and durable, is completely reasonable and applicable to the real world, obviously not with the three laws, but through any means that actually work.

Well, there is the minor detail that an AI in this context has zero ability to kill anyone, and that it's not a true AI like Daneel or his pals.