I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

Posted: Friday 21 June 2013 by Unknown in Labels: , , , ,
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The first book I read for our readathon was I, Robot. The popular Will Smith film was vaguely based on this collection of short stories in which US Robot and Mechanical Men, Inc. produce robots, but each seem to have serious flaws that need to be overcome.

The collection of nine stories are extremely naive in their expecting fully fledged robots by 1998 and their suggesting mining on Mercury in 2015, even the three laws of robotics that all robots must live by are naive. The first law (a robot cannot harm a human being) would never be implemented because, robotics are largely funded by governments, and are largely designed for war, obviously resulting in loss of human lives.


Overall I found this a charming collection of short stories, and a delightful insight into the origins of the film which I have loved since its release.


Helen 

1 comments:

  1. priestly says:
    1 August 2013 at 06:45

    It seems to me that the Robot Series does not attempt to be accurate at predicting the development of autonomous robots. The series concerns itself more with the ethical conflicts that arise when a machine with relatively limited information and capable of purely logical reasoning is faced with an uncertain and ambiguous world. Regarding the laws, they are not naive in my opinion. Without the laws, any robot with enough autonomy would simply become uncontrollable. The laws allow freedom within limits specified by the robot's owner. Anyway, regarding the use of robots, it seems a bit of a generalisation to claim that most robots are designed for war. Robots are mainly designed to work in factories and in the near future, we might see an increasing use of robots in the mental health sector.