Paperback, 272 pages
English language
Published Aug. 13, 2004 by Simon & Schuster.
This classic science fiction masterwork by Isaac Asimov weaves stories about robots, humanity, and the deep questions of existence into a novel of shocking intelligence and heart.
“A must-read for science-fiction buffs and literature enjoyers alike.”—The Guardian
I, Robot, the first and most widely read book in Asimov’s Robot series, forever changed the world’s perception of artificial intelligence. Here are stories of robots gone mad, of mind-reading robots, and robots with a sense of humor. Of robot politicians, and robots who secretly run the world—all told with the dramatic blend of science fact and science fiction that has become Asimov’s trademark.
The Three Laws of Robotics: 1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3) A …
This classic science fiction masterwork by Isaac Asimov weaves stories about robots, humanity, and the deep questions of existence into a novel of shocking intelligence and heart.
“A must-read for science-fiction buffs and literature enjoyers alike.”—The Guardian
I, Robot, the first and most widely read book in Asimov’s Robot series, forever changed the world’s perception of artificial intelligence. Here are stories of robots gone mad, of mind-reading robots, and robots with a sense of humor. Of robot politicians, and robots who secretly run the world—all told with the dramatic blend of science fact and science fiction that has become Asimov’s trademark.
The Three Laws of Robotics: 1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
With these three, simple directives, Isaac Asimov formulated the laws governing robots’ behavior. In I, Robot, Asimov chronicles the development of the robot from its primitive origins in the present to its ultimate perfection in the not-so-distant future—a future in which humanity itself may be rendered obsolete.
“Tremendously exciting and entertaining . . . Asimov dramatizes an interesting question: How can we live with machines that, generation by generation, grow more intelligent than their creators and not eventually clash with our own invention?”—The Chicago Tribune
Classic for a reason. An interesting exploration into the reality of what happens when Robots surpass humanity, slowly but surely.
Super inconsistent. Ses màquines són quasi-perfectes i no se deixen endur per sentiments excepte es 50% de ses vegades, que hi interfereixen ses pròpies emocions des robot. Ses màquines, que funcionen com computadors fent anàlisi de dades, prenen decisions morals sense entendre dades quantitatives/qualitatives. Se regeixen per únicament 3 lleis que no expliquen pràcticament res, simplement son ses bases d'un sistema moral pobre. Lleis inviolables, que se passen per es forro a pràcticament tots es capítols.
Llibre fet per a sa gent que basa sa seva opinió en base a respostes de xatGPT.
The topics in this book that were outstanding for me were parental neglect and bullying children into what parents feel they should do rather than letting them live and experiment. Crushing the psyche. It’s quite cute how psychologic story is also the origin of the psychologist career, good rhyme there.
But time proved Mrs. Weston a bit too optimistic. To be sure, Gloria ceased crying, but she ceased smiling, too, and the passing days found her ever more silent and shadowy. Gradually, her attitude of passive unhappiness wore Mrs. Weston down and all that kept her from yielding was the impossibility of admitting defeat to her husband. Asimov on parental priorities. Very accurate!
Then, I don’t know how popular were wild conspiracy theories in the 40s, but I loved the vignette where one of the experimental roboticists are working with a religious robots:
Powell’s fingers were in his mustache and …
The topics in this book that were outstanding for me were parental neglect and bullying children into what parents feel they should do rather than letting them live and experiment. Crushing the psyche. It’s quite cute how psychologic story is also the origin of the psychologist career, good rhyme there.
But time proved Mrs. Weston a bit too optimistic. To be sure, Gloria ceased crying, but she ceased smiling, too, and the passing days found her ever more silent and shadowy. Gradually, her attitude of passive unhappiness wore Mrs. Weston down and all that kept her from yielding was the impossibility of admitting defeat to her husband. Asimov on parental priorities. Very accurate!
Then, I don’t know how popular were wild conspiracy theories in the 40s, but I loved the vignette where one of the experimental roboticists are working with a religious robots:
Powell’s fingers were in his mustache and his eyes were slitted. “Listen, Cutie, if there is no such thing as Earth, how do you account for what you see through a telescope?”
“Pardon me!”
The Earthman smiled. “I’ve got you, eh? You’ve made quite a few telescopic observations since being put together, Cutie. Have you noticed that several of those specks of light outside become disks when so viewed?”
“Oh, that! Why certainly. It is simple magnification -- for the purpose of more exact aiming of the beam.”“Why aren’t the stars equally magnified then?”
“You mean the other dots. W ell, no beams go to them so no magnification is necessary. Really, Powell, even you ought to be able to figure these things out.”
Powell stared bleakly upward. “But you see more stars through a telescope. Where do they come from? Jumping Jupiter, where do they come from?” Cutie was annoyed. “Listen, Powell, do you think I’m going to waste my time trying to pin physical interpretations upon every optical illusion of our instruments?
Since when is the evidence of our senses any match for the clear light of rigid reason?”
Now we’re getting to the point which makes me rate this book at 4.5 stars instead of mere 4. Asimov has dreamed of prompt injections, which are widespread these days, even though we are in the early days of generative AI. This would be a fantastic idea for us five years ago. Maybe we would say that this is analagous to code injections in IT security, which was known and rampant for many years, but that’s about it.
Now stuff like this happens to tech giants and has to audited for. Obviously, as software is largely decoupled from the hardware, this doesn’t have as lingering of effects as described in the book, but potential input poisoning can render models useless! We’ll see a lot more fun akin to that in the coming years.
The general manager did so with alacrity,
“Here’s the deal now, chief. Consolidated Robots approached us a month ago with a funny sort of proposition. They brought about five tons of figures, equations, all that sort of stuff. It was a problem, see, and they wanted an answer from The Brain. The terms were as follows-- A hundred thousand for us if there is no solution and we can tell them the missing factors. Two hundred thousand if there is a solution, plus costs of construction of the machine involved, plus quarter interest in all profits derived therefrom. The problem concerns the development of an interstellar engine--”
Robertson frowned and his lean figure stiffened, “Despite the fact that they have a thinking machine of their own. Right?”
“Consolidated had a thinking machine. It’s broken. Nobody knows why, but I got hold of some pretty interesting guesses -- like, for instance, that they asked it to give them an interstellar engine with the same set of information they came to us with, and that it cracked their machine wide open.”
Further justifying the 4.5 mark is Asimov’s forewarning of the opacity of complex non-deterministic algorithms, such as the one we see in the modern ML/AI. We know how the models are trained and roughly what the models are doing, but we have no clue how they do what they do!
“And you said, ‘Have your boys check them and make sure, anyway.’”
“Susan, you read my mind. It was what I said, and he said he couldn’t.”
“Too busy?”
“No, he said that no human could. He was frank about it. He told me, and I hope I understand him properly, that the Machines are a gigantic extrapolation. Thus, a team of mathematicians work several years calculating a positronic brain equipped to do certain similar acts of calculation. Using this brain they make further calculations to create a still more complicated brain, which they use again to make one still more complicated and so on. According to Silver, what we call the Machines are the result of ten such steps.”
Asimov was philosophising about the singularity, but a small nudge against this particular work is that he didn’t philosophise enough about the equality. He could dream of a robot president of the world, but failed to dream of a female engineer.
“But you are telling me, Susan, that the ‘Society for Humanity’ is right; and that Mankind has lost its own say in its future.”
“It never had any, really. It was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces it did not understand -- at the whims of climate, and the fortunes of war. Now the Machines understand them; and no one can stop them, since the Machines will deal with them as they are dealing with the Society, -- having, as they do, the greatest of weapons at their disposal, the absolute control of our economy.”
“How horrible!” “Perhaps how wonderful! Think, that for all time, all conflicts are finally evitable. Only the Machines, from now on, are inevitable!”
I failed to mention an excerpt from the story I have intellectually enjoyed the most. It was the “Little Lost Robot” story. No matter how Asimov wrote Dr. Calvin in the “Liar!”, which was quite a gross read on so many levels, she is probably the smartest character when it comes to deduction among all of the characters.
The way she handled the case of the missing robot in “Little Lost Robot” is stellar and brought me pure intellectual joy. As a mystery genre enjoyer, I can’t help but to attribute forming the taste in the genre to Asimov’s precise deduction writing, reading which I have enjoyed as a kid. Possibly as much as stellar episode writing and acting in ITV’s Poirot and Columbo.
That concludes my review of “I, Robot”. How many Asimov’s gems we missed? Who knows. But also, on how many of these can we act, hindsight aside? Probably not many.
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've read other Asimov and enjoyed his work immensely, but this one was.. Okay? Like, its a collection of short stories that center around the logic in the three laws of robotics, but the problem is that some of the logic the characters employ isn't exactly logical? It was rather annoying to be screaming at the book about an obvious solution where the book also seemed to pride itself on being cerebral.
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.
FRANKENSTEINS MONSTER
In zijn korteverhalenbundel I, Robot gaat de vermaarde sciencefictionschrijver Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) uit van drie regels waaraan robots moeten voldoen:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Vervolgens maakt Asimov er een spel van met behulp van techniek en semantiek aan te tonen dat de regels minder logisch zijn dan ze schijnen en de toepassing ervan tot chaos leidt. Met het achterwege laten van menselijke emoties gaat hij een stap verder dan Karel Čapek in [b:R.U.R.|21048123|R.U.R.|Karel Čapek|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1394243335l/21048123.SY75.jpg|3065006], zij het dat robots ook hier fysiek nog op hun …
FRANKENSTEINS MONSTER
In zijn korteverhalenbundel I, Robot gaat de vermaarde sciencefictionschrijver Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) uit van drie regels waaraan robots moeten voldoen:
1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Vervolgens maakt Asimov er een spel van met behulp van techniek en semantiek aan te tonen dat de regels minder logisch zijn dan ze schijnen en de toepassing ervan tot chaos leidt. Met het achterwege laten van menselijke emoties gaat hij een stap verder dan Karel Čapek in [b:R.U.R.|21048123|R.U.R.|Karel Čapek|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1394243335l/21048123.SY75.jpg|3065006], zij het dat robots ook hier fysiek nog op hun maker lijken. Tegelijkertijd laat de schrijver zien hoe mensen zich kwetsbaar maken door de regels zelf af te wegen tegen bv. economische belangen. De boodschap van het laatste verhaal is dan ook ietwat apocalyptisch: Regel 1 is alleen uit te voeren door de macht uit handen te nemen van de mens.
Ondanks de interessante gedachtevorming, vond ik de verhalen helaas gortdroog. Ik kan niet zeggen dat ik ze met veel plezier las.
Like a commentary on society in a novel, kind of. Nothing like the film, v good
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.
Este es el inicio de toda la saga, son mini historias son el inicio de la IA y de aqui salen reseñas en los libros posteriores
I read, for the first time, I, Robot many years ago. Reading it for the second time now it wasn’t, as it was probably expected, the same as when I first read it. Although, I still find the central idea interesting, I cannot say I am excited by the book, especially Asimov’s prose style.
The book is a collection of nine stories, first appeared in the pulp science fiction magazine Super Science Stories and in John W Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction magazine between 1940 and 1950. If read from beginning to end, I-Robot can be seen as a story of robot evolution. Each story shares a common theme: the interaction between humans and robots and the concerns about the evolution of artificial intelligence.
All nine of the stories within the book share Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics”
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, …
I read, for the first time, I, Robot many years ago. Reading it for the second time now it wasn’t, as it was probably expected, the same as when I first read it. Although, I still find the central idea interesting, I cannot say I am excited by the book, especially Asimov’s prose style.
The book is a collection of nine stories, first appeared in the pulp science fiction magazine Super Science Stories and in John W Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction magazine between 1940 and 1950. If read from beginning to end, I-Robot can be seen as a story of robot evolution. Each story shares a common theme: the interaction between humans and robots and the concerns about the evolution of artificial intelligence.
All nine of the stories within the book share Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics”
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Beyond the three laws each story focuses on a specific subject, from technophobia and telepathy to religion and the existence of free will. One can understand why the stories had such a great influence on the world of science fiction. They are full of clever and innovative ideas that only a few years ago begun to become relevant.
My favourite story in the collection is the Little Lost Robot. Susan Calvin, robopsychologist for the U. S Robots, is trying to discover an NS-2robot, called Nestor, who has taken the order to “get lost” literally. When they found that this robot thinks differently from the others it becomes a potential threat for humans and it has to be destroyed. The story shows the fear of people to include those who are different, and if this sounds familiar, it’s because we still think we’re threatened by something different or something we don’t understand. Reading the story, it came to my mind the film I-robot, which is only loosely connected to the book, but there is a scene in the film where the hero, Will Smith, is trying–like Susan in the story - to find the robot that behaves differently. I am glad that in the movie Susan let Sonny live.
Evidence is also an interesting story. The robots look like humans, and therefore it becomes difficult to identify them. Susan Calvin is asked to help identify whether a successful lawyer and mayoral candidate is a human or a robot. Clever story with hints that we have met in Blade Runner or even better in Battlestar Galactica. I liked that Asimov left open the possibility that Byerley could be a robot.
The last story, perhaps the most important of all, envisions a world dominated by the three laws and controlled by the machines. However, does not seem to be the happy future that people envisioned. Machines have expanded the first law, which now reads as:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow humanity being to come to harm.
The machines do a better job than humans, but the constraints of the first law, like all constraints, prevent them from doing all they are capable to do. It seems though that in Asimov’s world, it’s not enough for humans to make their technology powerful; they also need to keep humanity safe and they do that by keeping machines under control.
Overall, the i-robot is a book with thought-provoking ideas. There are no answers in the book, just possibilities that makes you think about the future and life overall. Reading I-Robot in the middle of a pandemic, that we knew one day could happen, but we did nothing to prevent it, I could not avoid the thought that Asimov’s machines could handle the situation better than humans. It is true, that as technology is gradually getting more powerful, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. We need, therefore, as humanity, to try to develop the wisdom and steer things in the right direction. This, of course, raises many questions that will take time and perhaps quite a few books to discuss and answer.
Read the full review at Notes of a curious mind
Awesome to read sci-fi from 70 years ago.
It's interesting how the world evolved, but some ideas still are futuristic
This was a book I last read decades ago, but I was prompted by the free (translated) edition from 'Nederland Leest' with the extra chapter to read it again. Asimov's writing remains as sharp as ever and his ponderings over his own 3 laws provided food for thought, albeit of a rather legalistic kind. As would be expected, it was quite amusing to see what elements of the future he did not quite get right. Robot engineers are doing their calculations with a slide rule (try explaining that to anyone younger than myself) and the gender roles are pretty much stuck in the 50s (though probably having a woman as a senior person at US Robotics was seen as quite progressive then). With other things he was quite far-sighted; a robot reading people's thoughts and emotions is not so far off from the machine learning algorithms used to measure emotions …
This was a book I last read decades ago, but I was prompted by the free (translated) edition from 'Nederland Leest' with the extra chapter to read it again. Asimov's writing remains as sharp as ever and his ponderings over his own 3 laws provided food for thought, albeit of a rather legalistic kind. As would be expected, it was quite amusing to see what elements of the future he did not quite get right. Robot engineers are doing their calculations with a slide rule (try explaining that to anyone younger than myself) and the gender roles are pretty much stuck in the 50s (though probably having a woman as a senior person at US Robotics was seen as quite progressive then). With other things he was quite far-sighted; a robot reading people's thoughts and emotions is not so far off from the machine learning algorithms used to measure emotions in facial expressions (www.noldus.com/facereader) or current work on interpreting EEG.
The last chapter was newly written by Ronald Giphard, with the aid of 'Asibot' a computer-aided writing programme. It was of course not Asimov, though I must say the style was not too bad, above all because it did not really have any new ideas in it. The text was a bit disjointed in parts, which I suppose was due to Asibot's contribution, I read that the sudden appearance of the man with the beard did not come from Giphart. But mustn't grumble, it was a nice idea and well executed.
https://www.nederlandleest.nl/leeswijzer-ik-robot/
Inspiring as always. It'll be a bad day for me indeed when this awesome framed tale series doesn't fill me with delight and ambition to continue working on expert systems.
Asimov may not have invented robots, and his 3 laws are certainly a bit... silly, but the passion and intensity he brings to the table is second to none, in my opinion.
I remember watching a mediocre Will Smith film by this name, so I don't know why I picked it up, but its nothing like the movie, and so much better. This is the sort of tackling moral questions I love about scifi.
https://z-library.sk/book/119262884/de40b3/i-robot.html.