7. i,Robot

The concept of having real robots that display human characteristics is slightly frightening. I,Robot does a great job at illustrating the concept of robots integrating with society. Could that be where society is heading? Could robots be a part of society?

I think the most interesting part of I,Robot is the three laws. First, a robot must never harm a human, or allow harm to come to a human. Second, a robot must obey human commands unless it violates the first law. Third, a robot must protect itself unless that violates the first or second law. These laws show that someone must have programmed them to install these laws. More so they programmed them to attempt to keep humans on top. I also find it interesting that the rules have a hierarchy. The first law overrules everything. The second law overrules everything besides the first law. It shows where importance is placed. The robot is only allowed to save itself if it can guarantee that no human will be harmed first. By only having those three laws it does allow for a range of possibilities for the robot to operate under since nothing was clearly laid out.

The scary thing becomes what if something happened to those three laws? What if a robot didn’t have to obey them? This theory gets tested when the main character Mel meets Sonny, a robot who belonged to the creator of robots before his death. Sonny ends up being friendly, but the central intelligence is not. It becomes sentient and wants to take over the humans. This brings up the scary conclusion that humans created the machine that tried to overthrow them. Does this mean we have too much power? I think it’s more that we’ve gone too far in technology. It’s scary to think that one day we could in effect be our own downfall.

I think this can connect back to the idea of at what point is something still considered a machine? These robots are capable of making decisions based on circumstances to determine if they’re in accordance with the three laws. They’re capable of thought and conversation. It’s as if they’re closer to being human than to being machine.

We also once again see the concept of a sympathetic main character. A year prior to the events in the movie Del lost his arm saving a little girl. They replaced it with a robotic arm. Robotic body parts have a lot of potential even today as a form of prosthetics. It raises the question though of how much of you has to be human to still be human? If someone lost both of their legs and an arm and had them replaced with robotic limbs, are they still human? I think so since those arms and legs may be mechanical, but the soul is still real. Robot parts aren’t something to define someone; it’s something to assist someone.

Works Cited

Proyas, Alex, dir. i, Robot. CD-ROM.