I recently read this book and I must say I highly recommend it!!! *Note: This thread is going to be somewhat of a spoiler alert for concepts and material in the book, so don't proceed further if you haven't read it yet and want to. If you don't care to read the book, you can continue to read the thread and chime in some of my responses to the book... Not knowing much about this book going into it (except that it was made into a Will Smith movie) I didn't have much expectations... I was expecting pretty much an entertaining action story with some sci fi concepts aka a Will Smith movie . Well I must say that I was pleasantly surprised! This book was quite different than what I was expecting and different then any book that I have ever read really. The book is comprised of several short stories, there are reoccurring characters throughout the book and reoccurring concepts but each story raises a distinct issue of human interactions with robots, which tests human concepts of trust, empathy, co-operation, greed, knowledge, etc etc. I found it interesting that the human qualities seemed to be questioned as much as the qualities of the robots. If I had one knock on this book, it would be that the stories were kind of disjointed, each chapter was essentially a new story but with the reoccuring characters it could have perhaps a bit more flow. The book opted to make sure to get it's philisophical musings across at the expense of some structure to the book at times. But I want to discuss the strengths of this book... So there are 3 Laws of Robotics in the book: 1) A robot may never hurt a person 2) A robot must always obey a human except for where it breaks Law 1 3) A robot must seek self preservation except for where it breaks Laws 1 & 2 The robots in the book speak human language for the most part, and often can out function humans in cognitive and physical tasks. The first story starts off where a girl has a 'pet' robot and this raises issues of empathy. The girl becomes obsessed with playing with her robot and the robot always loses in the games they play which seems to boosts the mood of the girl. The girls parents, her mom in particular notices how her interactions with the robot is coming at the expense of interacting with people and affecting her in seemingly negative ways. After some pleading with the father, they decide to take the robot away and replace it with a dog, it's clear that the girl doesn't have the same sort of connection with the dog, eventually the family moves to where they shipped the robot. I found this chapter an interesting exercise in empathy. There is another chapter where a robot in space is sent to retrieve some space material for the humans, on it's mission it gets near a radiation field that is damaging to it's 'body' and eventually it gets to the point that it starts running in circles. Initially confused as to why the robot was not performing it's functions, they come to the conclusion that the robot is struggling with being programmed by the 2nd law but facing the 3rd law. This raises the issue that the laws can come into conflict by having to face a varying degree of each law. This concept really gave me an aha moment because prior to this the laws seemed really straightforward and understandable. There is a chapter where a Host Robot controls satellite robots. The Host Robot thinks for these other robots to perform particular functions for it. In the story, The Host Robot goes rogue to it's commands from the humans and the humans have to interact with it's satellites. This story again deals with the 3 laws, and delves into the issues of how much power a robot should be given and can interacting with a lesser robot that is controlled from a more powerful source trustworthy? Another chapter deals with humans on a space station receiving robots from the company on Earth producing robots which has tweaked the Laws of Robotics, this chapter dealt with human Greed and the issue of having to trust humans with these advanced entities of intelligence and strength. A similar issue is raised in the movie Alien, although in that movie the ship members are unaware the android is not human. Which brings me to an issue raised in a later chapter, and that is a politician accuses another politician of being a robot. The robots have became more human-like in this chapter. He claims he has never seen his opponent eat, (robots don't need to eat/sleep) so he goes to a robopsychologist and robot specialists to ask the other politican to eat, which the accused robot does eat. Still unconvinced, the opponent goes to the press to attempt to make the public aware of the politican's robotic-ness. The public is outraged and when the 'robot' politician makes a public appearance, he asked to punch a civilian which would obviously violate Robot Law 1. The politician obliges and quiets down the accusations of his robotic ness The chapter ends with robot psychologist talking with the politician and saying that he did not convince her of his humanity, as she suspects another robot played the part of the civilian being hit, thus not violating any of the Rules of Robotics. Another chapter deals with a Robot that is supposedly lying, which intuitively seems to be against a Law of Robotics. However the robot was massaging each person's ego giving them contradicting information in order to not emotionally hurt a human. So the robots deceit is in an attempt to be in accord with The Laws of Robotics 1, when both individuals who had dealt with the robot and had a position with the Robot Corporation at stakes, the Robot can't deal with the information being thrown out it and essentially short circuits. Those are the most memorable chapters for me, I didn't really pose any questions here and it reads as more of a synopsis but I think there is some issues here that are interesting and if anyone can get some dialogue going directly out of concepts I delved into, or if there are any other books, movies, philosophies that delve into these topics or similar ones, I think that could be interesting to discuss.
I read that years ago and really liked it. I remember how I loved the fact the Asimov questioned his own 3 laws in the stories. They often failed and caused the robots to do harm in the name of doing good. After all, the robots creators were human, and humans are not perfect, so why should the robots be?
