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I felt that the Will Smith movie was pretty good and true to Asimov's stories. There is a common theme in Asimov's stories that he exploits loopholes in the int

I felt that the Will Smith movie was pretty good and true to Asimov's stories. There is a common theme in Asimov's stories that he exploits loopholes in the interpretation of the 3 laws. I robot the movie did that pretty faithfully. It also hinted towards the advent of a robot like R Daneel, who would see beyond the 3 laws. The movie didn't adapt any particular book or short story, but that doesn't mean it didn't try to be faithful to Asimov.

tartuffe78 9y ago
The movie dumbed down the books complex issues we'll face with Robots to "They're going to take over the world". But at least Isaac Asimov was always promoting Dos Equis and Converse shoes in his books so they got that right...
le-mark 9y ago
I've always maintained that the Will Smith movie captured the spririt of the Asimov Robot stories, in an accessible way. I never understood the hate it gets.
- JshWright 9y ago
  A fundamental principle of Asimov's writing about robots was that the Three Laws were inviolate. Yes, the Zeroth law was introduced, but there was literally only one robot capable of handling that transition. In the movie you have thousands of robots running around killing and injuring countless humans. That's something I'm quite sure would never happen in Asimov's writing. Asimov was unique in that he was the first to start with the premise that humans _could_ safely develop advanced robots, rather than using the "robot uprising" trope that everyone before him used (all the way back to the first use of the term "robot" in Karel Čapek's R.U.R.). So, despite that groundbreaking approach, what do we get in the first major motion picture about his robot series? A robot uprising...
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    In the movie they are being remotely controlled while running in maintenance mode by a positronic brain that figured out the zeroth law by itself.
    - JshWright 9y ago
      Which is a bit of a plot cop-out in itself, in my opinion... But even if we consider that "one" robot, it doesn't change the fact that the central plot of the movie was a robot uprising, and involved a lot of humans killed by robots (something R. Daneel (the only robot to sustainably invoke the 0th law) never did).
      - stormbrew 9y ago
        To be a little bit fair, another robot did, it just didn't survive the application.
        JshWright 9y ago
        I used the word "sustainably" intentionally. R. Giskard didn't just use the Zeroth Law, he created it (and passed it on to R. Daneel).
        dingo_bat 9y ago
        Wait, Giskard didn't survive?? When did that happen?
        JshWright 9y ago
        Sorry, should have included a spoiler tag, I guess... At the end of Robots and Empire he allows Mandamus to activate his "nuclear intensifier", which will eventually render the Earth uninhabitable over the course of several decades (thereby driving humanity to colonize more stars). R. Giskard decided it was in the best interest of humanity for them to disperse, but couldn't rule out the possibility that some humans would be harmed in the process, so he permanently shut down.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    > Three Laws were inviolate Yes, technically. But practically, every single story showed how some robot was able to reason his way into violating the spirit of the laws. The movie was very crude about showing it, but it was the same concept present in every Asimov short story. > Asimov was unique in that he was the first to start with the premise that humans _could_ safely develop advanced robots, rather than using the "robot uprising" trope I, robot the movie did that too. It showed that a robot could glimpse at the spirit behind the laws and act not according to the letter, but according to the spirit of the laws. Finally, he helped the humans thwart the uprising, and the movie ends with the suggestion that he will influence other robots to see his viewpoint.
    - JshWright 9y ago
      > Yes, technically. But practically, every single story showed how some robot was able to reason his way into violating the spirit of the laws. Huh? There is literally one story (Little Lost Robot) where there is a "loophole" in the laws (and only because the First Law is modified to drop the "or through inaction allow a human to come to harm" bit). EDIT: in thinking about it further, I guess I'd add That Thou Are Mindful Of Him to the list of "loophole" stories. Still, two examples out of dozens of stories is very much the exception, not the rule.
      - dingo_bat 9y ago
        Runaround: in following the letter of the laws, the robots put our protagonists in danger of dying, which would obviously violate the spirit of the first law. Reason: the robots decide to redefine the term "human" Catch that rabbit: robot ignores first law unless forced by humans in a sticky situation (though this one is a bit ehhh) Liar: to avoid "hurting" the feelings of humans, a mind-reading robot hurts them in a much more real way Escape: due to a technical interpreation of hyperspatial travel, robot prevents humans from discovering hyperspatial travel. Vilating first law in the long term since humanity couldn't survive without a means of fast space travel. Evitable conflict: machines decide that the only way to perfectly follow the laws is to take control over humanity, which is the exact thing the laws were supposed to prevent. Little lost robot: you said it That's 7 out of the 9 stories in I, Robot. I have noticed this in most of his short stories and novels.
  - krapp 9y ago
    >A fundamental principle of Asimov's writing about robots was that the Three Laws were inviolate. In universe, maybe. But the actual purpose of the Three Laws as a plot device was for them to be violated, and provide the crux of the story that followed.
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      I cannot find it now, but I recall reading in a preface by Asimov himself that the purpose of the laws was always for them to be violated.
      - krapp 9y ago
        Of course - he wasn't actually trying to formulate a coherent ethical framework for artificial intelligence and demonstrate its utility, he was writing mystery stories with robots.
    - JshWright 9y ago
      In which stories did Asimov include a violation of the Laws? I can only think of a small handful of examples (out of dozens of stories).
      - dingo_bat 9y ago
        I made a list :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16812667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16812667
      - krapp 9y ago
        OK... "reinterpretation" then.
JshWright 9y ago
The I, Robot script started out as something entirely unrelated, and some minor tweaks were made to "Asmovify" it after they got the rights for the I, Robot name. In all of Asimov's robot short stories (including I, Robot), there was only one instance of a robot that violated the Three Laws. That's far from a common theme... Yes, there was the 0th Law in Robots and Empire (that later appears in the Foundation prequels), but that is a far more nuanced concept than the ideas in the I, Robot movie, where robots ran around killing and injuring humans indiscriminately.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  > In all of Asimov's robot short stories (including I, Robot), there was only one instance of a robot that violated the Three Laws. However, in every single story, the robot(s) found a loophole in the laws that resulted in going against the spirit of the laws. It's true that the movie showed a very crude version vs the very nuanced take in the stories. But I attribute that to the medium of film making itself.

tartuffe78 9y ago

The movie dumbed down the books complex issues we'll face with Robots to "They're going to take over the world". But at least Isaac Asimov was always promoting Dos Equis and Converse shoes in his books so they got that right...

le-mark 9y ago

I've always maintained that the Will Smith movie captured the spririt of the Asimov Robot stories, in an accessible way. I never understood the hate it gets.

JshWright 9y ago
A fundamental principle of Asimov's writing about robots was that the Three Laws were inviolate. Yes, the Zeroth law was introduced, but there was literally only one robot capable of handling that transition. In the movie you have thousands of robots running around killing and injuring countless humans. That's something I'm quite sure would never happen in Asimov's writing. Asimov was unique in that he was the first to start with the premise that humans _could_ safely develop advanced robots, rather than using the "robot uprising" trope that everyone before him used (all the way back to the first use of the term "robot" in Karel Čapek's R.U.R.). So, despite that groundbreaking approach, what do we get in the first major motion picture about his robot series? A robot uprising...
- rbanffy 9y ago
  In the movie they are being remotely controlled while running in maintenance mode by a positronic brain that figured out the zeroth law by itself.
  - JshWright 9y ago
    Which is a bit of a plot cop-out in itself, in my opinion... But even if we consider that "one" robot, it doesn't change the fact that the central plot of the movie was a robot uprising, and involved a lot of humans killed by robots (something R. Daneel (the only robot to sustainably invoke the 0th law) never did).
    - stormbrew 9y ago
      To be a little bit fair, another robot did, it just didn't survive the application.
      - JshWright 9y ago
        I used the word "sustainably" intentionally. R. Giskard didn't just use the Zeroth Law, he created it (and passed it on to R. Daneel).
        dingo_bat 9y ago
        Wait, Giskard didn't survive?? When did that happen?
        JshWright 9y ago
        Sorry, should have included a spoiler tag, I guess... At the end of Robots and Empire he allows Mandamus to activate his "nuclear intensifier", which will eventually render the Earth uninhabitable over the course of several decades (thereby driving humanity to colonize more stars). R. Giskard decided it was in the best interest of humanity for them to disperse, but couldn't rule out the possibility that some humans would be harmed in the process, so he permanently shut down.
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  > Three Laws were inviolate Yes, technically. But practically, every single story showed how some robot was able to reason his way into violating the spirit of the laws. The movie was very crude about showing it, but it was the same concept present in every Asimov short story. > Asimov was unique in that he was the first to start with the premise that humans _could_ safely develop advanced robots, rather than using the "robot uprising" trope I, robot the movie did that too. It showed that a robot could glimpse at the spirit behind the laws and act not according to the letter, but according to the spirit of the laws. Finally, he helped the humans thwart the uprising, and the movie ends with the suggestion that he will influence other robots to see his viewpoint.
  - JshWright 9y ago
    > Yes, technically. But practically, every single story showed how some robot was able to reason his way into violating the spirit of the laws. Huh? There is literally one story (Little Lost Robot) where there is a "loophole" in the laws (and only because the First Law is modified to drop the "or through inaction allow a human to come to harm" bit). EDIT: in thinking about it further, I guess I'd add That Thou Are Mindful Of Him to the list of "loophole" stories. Still, two examples out of dozens of stories is very much the exception, not the rule.
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      Runaround: in following the letter of the laws, the robots put our protagonists in danger of dying, which would obviously violate the spirit of the first law. Reason: the robots decide to redefine the term "human" Catch that rabbit: robot ignores first law unless forced by humans in a sticky situation (though this one is a bit ehhh) Liar: to avoid "hurting" the feelings of humans, a mind-reading robot hurts them in a much more real way Escape: due to a technical interpreation of hyperspatial travel, robot prevents humans from discovering hyperspatial travel. Vilating first law in the long term since humanity couldn't survive without a means of fast space travel. Evitable conflict: machines decide that the only way to perfectly follow the laws is to take control over humanity, which is the exact thing the laws were supposed to prevent. Little lost robot: you said it That's 7 out of the 9 stories in I, Robot. I have noticed this in most of his short stories and novels.
- krapp 9y ago
  >A fundamental principle of Asimov's writing about robots was that the Three Laws were inviolate. In universe, maybe. But the actual purpose of the Three Laws as a plot device was for them to be violated, and provide the crux of the story that followed.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    I cannot find it now, but I recall reading in a preface by Asimov himself that the purpose of the laws was always for them to be violated.
    - krapp 9y ago
      Of course - he wasn't actually trying to formulate a coherent ethical framework for artificial intelligence and demonstrate its utility, he was writing mystery stories with robots.
  - JshWright 9y ago
    In which stories did Asimov include a violation of the Laws? I can only think of a small handful of examples (out of dozens of stories).
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      I made a list :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16812667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16812667
    - krapp 9y ago
      OK... "reinterpretation" then.

JshWright 9y ago

The I, Robot script started out as something entirely unrelated, and some minor tweaks were made to "Asmovify" it after they got the rights for the I, Robot name. In all of Asimov's robot short stories (including I, Robot), there was only one instance of a robot that violated the Three Laws. That's far from a common theme... Yes, there was the 0th Law in Robots and Empire (that later appears in the Foundation prequels), but that is a far more nuanced concept than the ideas in the I, Robot movie, where robots ran around killing and injuring humans indiscriminately.

dingo_bat 9y ago
> In all of Asimov's robot short stories (including I, Robot), there was only one instance of a robot that violated the Three Laws. However, in every single story, the robot(s) found a loophole in the laws that resulted in going against the spirit of the laws. It's true that the movie showed a very crude version vs the very nuanced take in the stories. But I attribute that to the medium of film making itself.