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Isaac Asimov: I, Robot (Hardcover, 2004, Bantam Books)

Isaac Asimov's I, Robot launches readers on an adventure into a not-so-distant future where man …

Review of 'I, Robot' on 'Goodreads'

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/