a book

I, Robot

Name: I, Robot
Rating: 5 (6 reviews)
Author: Isaac Asimov
ISBN: 9780553382563

Isaac Asimov · 2004 · 224 pages

They mustn't harm a human being, they must obey human orders, and they must protect their own existence.. .but only if doing so doesn't violate rules one and two. With these Three Laws of Robotics, humanity embarks on perhaps its greatest adventure: the invention of the first positronic man.

Isaac Asimov's I, Robot launches readers on an adventure into a not-so-distant future where man and machine struggle to redefine life, love, and consciousness itself. For the scientists who invented the earliest robots weren't content that their creations should remain programmed helpers, companions, and semisentient worker- machines. And soon the robots themselves, aware of their own intelligence, power, and humanity, aren't satisfied either. Now human men and women find themselves confronting telepathic robots, robot politicians, robots gone mad, and vast robotic intelligences that may already secretly control the world in the next great evolutionary struggle for survival. And both man and robot are asking the same questions: What is human? And is humanity obsolete?
--back cover

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recommended by 6 people

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Andrej Karpathy
“This was certainly an interesting experience, given that the short stories in this book were written at about 1940-1950, but the events the in book take place at about 2070. (i.e. right now in 2012 we are almost exactly half way there) The book contains 9 short stories, from which the ones I would most recommend are Reason and Evidence. What strikes me as most interesting is the nature of predictions in the book. Some predictions are too pessimistic and some are too optimistic, but in funny ways. Here are examples: - The robots in 2070 are described to be heavy, metalic, and have diaphragms. More likely, we'd now think that robots at that time will be made of super light-weight carbon fibers, and they certainly won't have diaphragms when we can just use speakers? - Most interestingly, in charge of the hardcore theory of robots are ... mathematicians. In fact, the positronic brains are seen to yield behavior based on solutions of differential equations. These days, we would most likely not think of including (pure) mathematicians in robotics, and we rarely ever think of algorithms in AI/Machine Learning in terms of differential equations. (wait, should we? ) - One story mentions that the protagonists recorded a video, and that he had to to get it developed. Interesting that it was not obvious that this limitation would not be overcome by 2070, and that we wouldn't be using film. - Even though some of the above contain severely pessimistic views of the world, Isaac imagines us to have hyperatomic drives in 2070, that allow for easy interstellar travel. It is strange to think that we can conquer space, but still need to "develop" a video. Anyway, overall I liked the stories. Many of them essentially come down to an almost detective-like story, where there is something wrong with the robots, and the protagonist has to figure out how the observed behavior has come about from the 3 laws and logical inferences. In general I like the idea that sufficiently advanced robots will become so complicated that we will lose the ability to fully interpret their behavior. There will simply be too many moving parts, and what we observe in terms of the behavior will only ever be the tip of the iceberg. The underlying, perfectly deterministic and individually understandable complexity will simply collapse all together into one term, and we will call it personality. I look forward to these times, at some point around 2070 (sounds reasonable to me).”↗
Sriram Krishnan
“Childhood sci fi books that most influenced me - 2001 - Jurassic Park - Sphere - Rendezvous with Rama ( and several Clarke short stories) - Snowcrash - I, Robot”↗
Laurie Voss
“@ThePenguinLemma @MusingsOfDeimos The I, Robot book (actually a short story collection) is amazing if you've not read it. Enough ideas to make a dozen movies.”↗
Lex Fridman
Sahil Lavingia
Shah Rukh Khan