Isaac Asimov, 'I, Robot'

I, Robot

Author

Written by Isaac Asimov

Publisher

Uri Education | Published 2008-07-15

Category

Fiction

Book description

One of the 'three great masters of SF' alongside Arthur Clarke and Robert Heinlein ...

Author's rating

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After rereading the title a few times, the \"I\" here, that is, the 'I,' seems indeed to be Susan, who drives the content. The 'robot' refers to the robots Susan has remembered all along. So rather than just reading this book as 'I, Robot' and moving on, I think it would have been easier to understand the book's content if one had taken it in by interpreting it freely as 'I' and 'the Robot.' Saying I, Robot, I, Robot, I read it wondering what kind of robot this was—how foolish of me. The keywords for analyzing this book could be 'the robot,' 'I' (Susan), and the society within the book, and as a side note, things to consider together with the film 'I, Robot.'

Earlier I said that the book's title 'I, robot' seems to refer to Susan. In the narrative structure of this book, Susan is the narrator who unfolds the 'memories of the past' she holds, and this narrator's attitude toward robots is very principled and tries to view them as equals. At the same time, Susan perceives the being called the 'robot' as a very 'perfect being.' There may be certain functional flaws, but at least it adheres very thoroughly to what humans command and makes no logically wrong mistakes. But I read the book thinking a bit differently. Humans think imperfectly. That is, they are not always rational. I think the 'rationality' built on irrational thinking is bound to always have gaps. So I believe robots, too, could be the same. This probably arose because the 'Susan' from the film got projected onto the literary work. In the film, the biggest reason Spooner was saved was that his probability of survival was higher than Sarah's, and so doesn't Spooner come to hold a resentment toward robots he'll never forget for the rest of his life? But Susan, both before and after hearing that story, thought robots were fine because they are programmed to act for humans. But that wasn't the case.

1. The robot, in itself.

<Robbie> Robbie can be called nearly the 'earliest form' of robot in the book. I surmised it was the first robot to have considerable 'advanced-level' abilities, not the first robot with only simple logic. Although it came earliest in time, what stood out was how remarkably well it accommodated a child's logic, which can be somewhat hard to understand. It lacks only the function of speech; aside from that, it has almost everything. It does whatever it's asked, and its own will is fairly firm to some degree (the point of demanding what it wants; the Cinderella story). But you can still tell that socially, robots were expensive (half a year's income), and it's a robot scolded by Gloria's mother, who says that because it can't speak, the machine has no soul either. Yet behind this, you can guess from the fact that the being the child relies on within the family is not the mother that the relationship between mother and daughter was not smooth, and it shows a situation where a factory worked only by robots already exists and that factory, too, is running well.

Ironically, from the point that the child Robbie loves does not feel much joy in the city, I could grasp the author's premise that urban civilization is not necessarily robot civilization. At first, I couldn't really judge whether 'the robot' and 'the urban' could be separated. With the machine itself already deeply embedded even in the countryside, I couldn't reach a conclusion about whether a robot, which represents the automation of machinery, could exist individually. But since the people who make robots would put in something like automatic energy regeneration through solar charging (though now, because charging efficiency is low, it seems they both charge and use electricity that's constantly connected), I felt the author's premise, though from 'decades ago,' was very realistic.

<Speedy> Starting from Speedy, it shows that 'logical errors' can arise. Compared to 'Robbie,' the robots that appear afterward each have a slight 'logical flaw.' In Speedy's case too, it has to go fetch selenium, but because the command was not instilled strongly, its logic circuit got tangled as it also tried to protect its own life. The robotic 'Three Laws' that appear from here on are commonly applied to the robots that show up afterward, which is to say I could tell that the story going forward could unfold under these Three Laws. Also, since Speedy too was 'very expensive,' I read the book still carrying the perception that robots are 'expensive.' Donovan and Powell, even though they first recognized that their lives were in danger, become more cautious because the robot is 'expensive.' The fact that a Soviet author had such a 'capitalist' way of thinking struck me as fascinating throughout the reading.

<Cutie> Cutie's existence was an 'irony.' It would be right to explain it as a robot designed not to harm humans but one that does not trust humans. The important point is that the scene where it treats people under the hypothesis that it and its creator (the station) are perfect implies the possibility of a 'robot' revolution. As in the film 'I, Robot,' if developed Three-Laws reasoning is possible, the point that one can take actions to protect all of humanity while also imposing 'restrictions' on individuals could be seen in this 'Cutie' too.

<Dave> Dave seems to have no distinguishing feature other than showing that there are limits to commanding robots, too. The part where it's made to do something like close-order drill to prevent accidents is decidedly modeled on humans, and there was a bit of regret over whether there is no 'something' uniquely the robot's own. But to say that this alone shows the author's imagination was lacking—since he had already realized so much through imagination, there's nothing more to say.

<Herbie> played the role of a flawed counselor very capably. The basics of a counselor is listening well, and on that point Herbie solved listening well by 'reading minds.' However, in the point of telling people what they want to hear, it shows the limits of the 'First Law.' Not harming humans is a very complex problem. Problems like human relationships have nothing that could be called a 'correct answer.' What's good for one is bad for another. This point is fully revealed in the scene where Herbie cannot respond when faced with various questions and demands. Since it operated under a principle that regards an imperfect part as perfect (this is my premise), I thought of course it would be so, but I cannot at all understand why the author developed it this way. It contrasts with the part at the conclusion where Susan says 'the robot' is perfect. The robot was still portrayed as imperfect. To call this a 'mutation' of the positronic brain—I figured maybe it was a mutation while the laws were being kept.

<Nestor 10> The model name is NS-2. Since the models that appear in the film are NS4, NS5, you can tell this is the 2nd generation and the film is the 4th and 5th generations. But you can't tell any external differences from the book, and if there's a similarity, it's that both are presumed to have 'learning ability.' The things about how the NS-2 units that were with Nestor 10, which had been ordered to disappear, had learned and were therefore also dangerous and had to be destroyed, and the scene at the film's last moment where Sonny looks down at the other NS-5s from atop a hill, plant the premise that robots, too, can change by learning. Also, beyond such scenes, there's a scene borrowed in the film (the scene where there were 1001 robots in the factory), which was an interesting part too. The scenes of fleeing and of aiming a gun were all actions to protect itself within situations of not harming humans, which was quite logical.

<The Brain> is the same kind of being as the film's 'VIKI,' but it's a being weaker than VIKI. While VIKI is at any rate a system that can control USR's building, the Brain seemed to be just a lump of artificial intelligence, not systematized like that. (The illustration is also drawn far too small.) An interesting point is that Susan strives to view the robot's psychology within the 'Three Laws.' The author seems to have, throughout the book, agonized over applying these laws to robots from start to finish.

Byerley partly brings the Bicentennial Man to mind. (Since Asimov did end up writing the novel 'Bicentennial Man,' I came to think, 'did the author want to re-create Byerley's story?' Bicentennial means two centuries, and the Byerley here, too, seems to be living a life close to 200 years as a doppelgänger.) I remember seeing Bicentennial Man at a very young age (I think it was before middle school), and I think I was rather shocked by it. He was just a 'robot' at first, then artificially created a brain, organs, body parts, and skeleton to help people, and later, by fitting them onto his own body one by one, became, in his own way, a person who is quite human—wasn't that how it went? Byerley, too, exists as a 'robot' he created while dying, and at the same time as an old man, which I found quite fascinating. And the part of the conclusion where the robot (Byerley) says, isn't the robot imperfect, brought me a sense of puzzlement. The fact that Byerley, who always kept to principles in his actions, made an approach to thinking truly similar to a 'human,' seems to show that being made of metal does not necessarily mean one cannot be a robot. Since he's portrayed as outstanding in work ability, there's nothing more to say. As 'Susan' mentions in the book, I think it's natural to think that, precisely because it's a robot, it can do things for humans better than humans can. After all, Susan was on 'the robot's' side throughout the book.

2. The society that supports the story

Despite being of Soviet origin, he seems to have written this novel largely on the basis of 'capitalist' thinking. The fact that he moved to the United States seems to play a part too, and throughout the story the capitalist approach to 'economic logic' never disappears. Even when they want to just get rid of a robot that does not function 'properly,' they cannot dispose of it carelessly because it's expensive, and at the conclusion it wraps up with the conclusion that isn't it safer for robots to be in control. Also, the idea that the proposal to give 20 percent of profits if an experiment proposed through the 'Brain' succeeds would be a decent proposal if it succeeded—this too gives a feeling of something like 'robot = money -> development.' But I don't know whether society is really developing that way. Although it's said he wrote in a very wide range of fields, it was a shame that even in an ideal worldview there were stories about 'robots' but no deep insight into 'people.' It felt as though it were not a society where people themselves think and move, but one where robots are helping with everything.

The point that it revealed a somewhat more positive gaze toward a 'controlled society' was a little different from 1984, Brave New World, or Neuromancer. The biggest reason I see the society Asimov drew in this book as 'positive' is that the premise of 'robots that think perfectly' lies at its foundation. This part was refreshing. Because in a society developing through robots, although robots are doing the work of sorting out 'superior and inferior,' the resulting loss of humanity, extreme stratification, and so on were not visible.

I have no great interest in SF and have only ever approached such works as individual pieces, but in this work too, the point that keeps raising doubts is precisely the author's premise about 'perfection.' As I wrote earlier, the author narrated in the direction of society developing further owing to the perfection of robots. But I don't know whether that development is truly an equitable development. Just as the world is now being reorganized by the rise of 'China,' the book talks about the rise of the 'tropical regions' and the decline of Europe. Such pictures can be seen as closer to a society with disparities, like today's society, rather than a direction where everyone lives well together. In other words, the novel was written under the premise that 'capitalism' will still subordinate everything in the future too. But whether capitalism will persist is uncertain (I'm skeptical about this part), and I'm not sure whether perfect robots will be made either. I think cases of overturning, like Speedy, could perfectly well arise. Of course, although it's limited to that space, the way of approaching the world while doubting one's own existence is decidedly 'human,' and if robots become 'humanized,' I think it would then be hard for them to exist as robots that keep the 'Three Laws.'

3. Setting aside structure, narrativity, subject matter, and so on

I think the author's imagination was tremendous. I couldn't believe that this began from a work of decades ago (from the time he wrote Robbie as a short story). While gathering materials this time, I learned that the use of the term 'robot' is an even older matter, but in a sense it was Asimov who 'concretized' it. In any case, had it not been for Asimov's literary imagination, it would have been hard for such a concretized 'robot' to appear this early. And I want to say it was tremendous in the point that he unraveled that imagination through a fictional character named 'Susan.'