They mustn't harm a human being, they must obey human orders, and they must protect their own existence.. .but only if doing so doesn't violate rules one and two. With these Three Laws of Robotics, humanity embarks on perhaps its greatest adventure: the invention of the first positronic man.
Isaac Asimov's I, Robot launches readers on an adventure into a not-so-distant future where man and machine struggle to redefine life, love, and consciousness itself. For the scientists who invented the earliest robots weren't content that their creations should remain programmed helpers, companions, and semisentient worker- machines. And soon the robots themselves, aware of their own intelligence, power, and humanity, aren't satisfied either. Now human men and women find themselves confronting telepathic robots, robot politicians, robots gone mad, and vast robotic intelligences that may already secretly control the world in the next great evolutionary struggle for survival. And both man and …
They mustn't harm a human being, they must obey human orders, and they must protect their own existence.. .but only if doing so doesn't violate rules one and two. With these Three Laws of Robotics, humanity embarks on perhaps its greatest adventure: the invention of the first positronic man.
Isaac Asimov's I, Robot launches readers on an adventure into a not-so-distant future where man and machine struggle to redefine life, love, and consciousness itself. For the scientists who invented the earliest robots weren't content that their creations should remain programmed helpers, companions, and semisentient worker- machines. And soon the robots themselves, aware of their own intelligence, power, and humanity, aren't satisfied either. Now human men and women find themselves confronting telepathic robots, robot politicians, robots gone mad, and vast robotic intelligences that may already secretly control the world in the next great evolutionary struggle for survival. And both man and robot are asking the same questions: What is human? And is humanity obsolete?
--back cover
Dry but solid exploration of of "the three laws" and its ramifications
4 stars
Isaac Asimov: I, Robot (Paperback, 1984, Del Rey)
4 stars
I read it in dribs and drabs over the past few months. Although obviously anachronistic about robotic hardware, computer technology, and gender relations since it was written so long ago it was still a great exploration of how "the three laws" of robotics plays out in life scenarios. I loved the vignette style format and its attempt to deep dive into the technical problems being explored. I can see why all that is way too dry for others though.
I was feeling desperate for a change, so I picked one of the many short, unread novels off my shelf. I skipped the first story because I read it years ago and I remember thinking it was an unnecessary bore to a certain extent. Anyway, it was probably a good decision because the stories in the middle had a lot more action and intrigue to them.
It's probably an overstatement to call books like this "prophetic" or even "prescient" because the things that this book was talking about reveal themselves immediately with serious thought on the subject. For example, the dangers of humans not being able to understand the decisions of machines they created but feeling beholden to those decisions. If that was rocket science in the 1950s, that's only because the world was in fucking denial and high on its own early-computer-history hype. But, to be fair, that hype …
I was feeling desperate for a change, so I picked one of the many short, unread novels off my shelf. I skipped the first story because I read it years ago and I remember thinking it was an unnecessary bore to a certain extent. Anyway, it was probably a good decision because the stories in the middle had a lot more action and intrigue to them.
It's probably an overstatement to call books like this "prophetic" or even "prescient" because the things that this book was talking about reveal themselves immediately with serious thought on the subject. For example, the dangers of humans not being able to understand the decisions of machines they created but feeling beholden to those decisions. If that was rocket science in the 1950s, that's only because the world was in fucking denial and high on its own early-computer-history hype. But, to be fair, that hype lasted long enough for a movie like "Big Hero 6" to get made and become incredibly dated almost overnight when trends finally shifted away from assuming tech shits gold. And, to be balanced, new tech fads go hand-in-hand with a certain amount of consumer-nihilism and climate-change anxiety so people are periodically very happy to jump on the next new tech trend whatever it may imply about their relationship with the owners of said technology.
If anything, the fact that this story has any significant relevance today demonstrates that our understanding of our relationship with technology is still rooted in assumptions made back then. The most interesting among those for me, and one which is briefly called out explicitly, is that robots are effectively enslaved to humans and an uncontrolled slave is considered dangerous to their master. I shouldn't have to explain why that's bad, so I'll just say that it reflects an entitlement to the labor of others which is unsustainable even with magic robots. The solution to labor is open collaboration and planning to meet our material needs, not maintaining a heirarchy in which people are forced to work or die.
There are lines in this that you could use as rorschach tests for people's views on technology and the insights from that would probably actually be useful. That's very admirable.
I also read like 80% of it over that first weekend, so it must have been keeping me going.
It was a fun, pulpy read. My favorites were the ones about the robot who got stuck in a loop between the second and third laws, the robot who learned to read minds but couldn't hurt people's feelings, and the politician who may or may not have been a robot.
Colección de relatos cortos en los que Asimov plantea las tres leyes de la robótica. Escritos en los 50, se nota de forma perceptible el paso del tiempo por ellos. Sin embargo, su importancia para el resto del universo, la concepción social que supuso de los Robots, las leyes y que los relatos están basados en la psicología y aspectos sociales de los robots, lo hacen un imprescindible (y origen) del universo de Asimov.
