I, Robot

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Summary

Detective Del Spooner (Smith) is called to the headquarters of a top robotics company in Chicago to investigate the apparent suicide of Dr Alfred Lanning (Cromwell), the company’s most senior scientist. The year is 2035, and robots are a part of everyone’s life doing all the menial chores including shopping, cleaning, collecting rubbish and serving behind bars. Spooner, however, is deeply anti-robot. He suspects that, not only has Lanning been murdered, but that a robot is responsible. However, the robots are supposedly programmed never to harm human beings. The people around Spooner begin to see him as not simply a maverick but as paranoid or mentally unstable. He is suspended, ridiculed and almost killed. Spooner has been off work for some time before this case, and he doesn’t sleep well, being haunted by nightmares – his chief is concerned that he is returning to work too early. Maybe everyone is right and he really is paranoid. But if robots really can go against their programming not to cause harm, they have the potential to become a very malign force within society.
 

Background

I, Robot is ‘suggested by’ – rather than based upon – Isaac Asimov’s 1950 short story collection with the same title in which he formulated the now famous three laws of robotics. The three laws have influenced not just science fiction but real world robotics:

1. A robot may not harm a human or, by inaction, allow a human being to come to harm
    
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law.
    
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.

Asimov was weary of science fiction stories about mad scientists – or their experiments – running amok, and saw robots as having a wonderful potential for bringing benefits to humanity. Alex Proyas’ film, I, Robot, sticks with the more conventional science fiction perspective and focuses on the threat of a robot take-over. This is a common theme within science fiction, despite Asimov’s views, and underpins the Matrix trilogy, the Terminator films and the forthcoming Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow among many others. But while this is familiar territory, Jeff Vintar’s screen story gives it an interesting twist by looking at how a sophisticated artificial intelligence could come to reinterpret the laws in ways that would be catastrophic for human life as we know it.

The fears of robot domination are not confined to the world of science fiction, however. Bill Joy, chief scientist of Sun Microsystems and co-chairman of the Presidential Commission on Artificial Intelligence, warned in a controversial article in Wired (Issue 8.04, April 2000) that robotics, nanotechnology (microscopic robots) and genetic engineering pose three of the greatest dangers facing humanity.
 

Questions

1. Did I, Robot work for you as a film? Why/why not? Which elements within it worked well, and which didn’t? How did you feel about the product placement within the film?
    
2. How do you feel about the potential of a world in which all the menial jobs were carried out by robots? Would it make any difference to you if robots were humanoid and could communicate intelligently?
    
3. Does it matter that the film has a very different perspective on a robotic future from Isaac Asimov’s short stories which ‘suggested’ this story? How does this story compare with similar stories in other films?
    
4. Do you think Spooner is reasonable in his bias against robots after the accident which he recounts for Dr Susan Calvin? Is he correct in saying that a human being would have acted differently from the robot? Is there a right or wrong course of action in such a situation?
    
5. How has VIKI reinterpreted the three laws of robotics? Is VIKI right to claim that her ‘logic is flawless’? Spooner responds that ‘it just seems so heartless.’ In what ways is it heartless? Logical or not, is there any ethical justification for VIKI’s actions? If VIKI’s solution to human conflict isn’t correct, what other solutions can there be?
    
6. What is I, Robot saying about the ethics of technology generally, and of robotics in particular? Are the three laws of robotics enough, or should there be other principles brought into play? If so, what?
    
7. What is the film suggesting about the nature of consciousness? What are the implications if true artificial intelligence/consciousness is something which evolves within a very complex system?
    
8. Spooner: ‘You are a clever imitation of life . . . Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot take a blank canvas and turn it into a masterpiece?’
    
   Sonny: ‘Can you?’
    
   What is it that makes us human?
    
9. What do you think is the significance of Sonny’s dream? What is being suggested in the final scene of Sonny standing on the hill above the mass of NS-5 robots?
    
10. Sonny: ‘My father made me for a purpose. We all have a purpose, don’t you think, detective?’
     
    Do you think I, Robot is suggesting that all consciousness spontaneously evolves, or that life is created by a benevolent creator,a Father? Or is it trying to have it both ways? What is your understanding of purpose within your own life?
     
11. When Spooner suggests that a robot could be a murderer, Susan Calvin says, 'A robot can no more commit murder than a human could . . . walk on water.' Spooner replies, 'Well, you know there was this one guy, long time ago . . .'
    
    Why do you think this line and other occasional references to Christian faith appear in I, Robot (e.g. Spooner’s grandmother, Gigi)?
    

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