Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in I, Robot, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Morality and Ethics
Human Superiority and Control
Irrationality, Fear, and Folly
Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, and Humanity
Summary
Analysis
The unnamed narrator, a reporter from the Interplanetary Press, has spent three days at U.S. Robots, and surveys the notes he’s taken from interviewing Dr. Susan Calvin. She was born in 1982 and is now 75—the same age as the company for which she works, U.S. Robot and Mechanical Men. She is a “frosty girl” who protects herself from the world with a “mask-like expression and a hypertrophy of intellect.”
The framing device of I, Robot, in which a reporter is interviewing Susan Calvin, was created in order to tie together the book’s stories through the viewpoint of Susan Calvin. Calvin is perhaps the most central human of all of the stories, but it is notable that Asimov ties her more closely to the robots than to other humans—highly intelligent, but generally devoid of emotion.
Themes
The “calculating machines” created in the mid-20th century had been completely outdone by a man named Lawrence Robertson, who created the positronic brain. Calvin learned to construct those “brains,” obtaining a Ph.D. in 2008 and joining U.S. Robots as a “Robopsychologist.” For 50 years, the reporter describes, she “watched the direction of human progress change—and leap ahead.”
The fact that U.S. Robots was in need of a “robopsychologist” demonstrates how far artificial intelligence has come in Calvin’s lifetime, as she helps navigate the robots’ own “consciousness” and help humans navigate their ethical boundaries, as can be seen in many of the stories.
Themes
Calvin is retiring, and the reporter wants to do a story on her time at U.S. Robots to get the “human-interest angle.” Calvin scoffs at this comment, saying that many people call her a robot herself. She asks the narrator how old he is. When he tells her he is 32, she notes that he wouldn’t remember a world without robots. She states that they are “a cleaner better breed” than humans.
Asimov again compares Calvin to a robot, blurring the lines between what constitutes a human and what constitutes a robot. Concepts like compassion, emotion, intelligence, consciousness, and morality are variously ascribed to robots over the course of the story, and Calvin even argues here (as Asimov does) that robots can sometimes be better than people in these domains.
Themes
Calvin begins recounting some of the history of robots as she has experienced it, starting from the year before she joined the company. At that time, robots could not talk, but when they became more human, opposition began from labor unions and segments of religious organizations. She starts to relate the case of Robbie, a non-vocal robot who was made and sold in 1996 as a nursemaid.
Calvin foreshadows some of the conflicts that will arise between humans and the robots. As the robots become more and more advanced, people start to feel threatened by them and wish to maintain superiority over them. Asimov shows over the progression of his stories how these attempts will fail.
Themes
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