Morality and Ethics
I, Robot is a collection of short stories exploring humans’ development of robots, and the ethics that govern those robots’ behavior. Written between 1940 and 1950, the stories progress in time from 1996 to 2052 and center on the development of very advanced robots. But in contrast to the many stories that depict robots becoming corrupted or turning on their creators, Asimov’s stories largely show that robots follow their ethical standards more closely than humans…
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Human Superiority and Control
Beyond the ethical considerations of robots, Asimov explores the hierarchy between humans and robots from the perspective of who is in control. Even though robots are products of human development, humans frequently have difficulty believing that they are fully in control of the robots, and Asimov’s stories spark questions about whether humans are wise or logical enough to anticipate the consequences of their own technology. Because humans so frequently seem unable to understand the defects…
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Irrationality, Fear, and Folly
In addition to exploring the nature of robots, Asimov also delves into some of the perceptions and motivations that drive human behavior. Whereas Asimov’s robots are generally shown to be logical and rigidly abide by the laws that have been programmed into them, human characters are shown to be deeply irrational, often spurred by their fear of the very robots they have created. In I, Robot, Asimov shows how this irrationality frequently drives human…
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Artificial Intelligence, Consciousness, and Humanity
While Asimov does delineate differences between the human and nonhuman figures in I, Robot, Asimov also shows how the societies in his stories have started to blend the two. He endows the robots with a technology called a “positronic brain,” giving them a form of consciousness that humans also possess. It is this consciousness that causes humans to anthropomorphize the robots’ actions, behaviors, and thought processes. Asimov demonstrates that the robots seem…
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