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I, Robot Hits the Theaters
I, Robot: A Movie Review that's 3 Laws (and Spoiler) Safe!
A movie review by Rob Carr
Thanks to Eide's Entertainment I got to see I, Robot tonight. As someone who grew up with Isaac Asimov's robot stories, I've come to expect a mystery based on the implications of the 3 Laws of Robotics (or the lack of one or part of one of those laws), the "Frankenstein Complex," and Dr. Susan Calvin. I was afraid that the movie might miss out on this, especially since it's not a direct adaptation of the book, but "inspired" by the Good Doctor Asimov.
The movie met my expectations and more. Will Smith, whom we all know as an overconfident smart@$$ character from such movies as "Independence Day" and the two "Men in Black" movies, played a somewhat less confident and far less wisecracking character. It was a welcome change to see him less confident. Yeah, some of the stunts were a little absurd (am I the only one thinking of Gemini 8 at one point in the movie?) but that's to be expected from this type of movie. Bridget Moynahan was far too young to be the Susan Calvin I remember, but that's also to be expected in this type of movie. James Cromwell (whom you'll all remember from Star Trek: First Contact and Enterprise's "Broken Bow" episode as Dr. Zefram Cochrane) gave a flat performance - but that's actually a complement. I doubt anyone will recognize Wash from "Firefly" as an important robot in the story.
It's customary to comment on how well the CGI was done. I liked it, but then again, I'm not hypercritical on something like that. I did wonder a little bit about center of balance as some of the robots walked, but mostly I didn't think about it at all, which to me is the goal of CGI. I did wonder about children's fingers getting caught in some of the open gaps on the robot's bodies. Real world models would have a bit more covering, one would think. But that's being picky.
I have no memory of the soundtrack music. That in and of itself might say something. I'm a musician, but it just didn't register.
I figured out some clues, missed some others, and was surprised several times in the movie. There were a lot of clues - this isn't one of those mysteries where the answer is pulled out of the writer's a...out of thin air.
I'm not a complete continuity freak, so I can't tell if the movie violated any of Asimov's universe, but from what I can remember, it fits pretty well (if you ignore Dr. Calvin's age) and might even explain a few things.
Given that even some of the geeks in the audience were surprised to find out that there was a book of stories just like the movie, I think the movie will hopefully bring Asimov's stories to a new generation.
I liked "I, Robot. It's worth seeing, especially if you 've already seen Spider-Man 2 at least once. It's a pretty good (though not great) movie.
Having read Slashdot for a while, I know that there are folks out there who will despise this movie because it's not exactly like the book. Others will hate the movie or worship it, and loads of people are going to savage this review. You know what? That's fine with me. I had fun with this movie, had a nice date with my wife, and it didn't cost anything. I even had fun typing up this review. You're allowed to be different and to agree or disagree with me. Heck, that's a big chunk of what makes the world fun. Interestingly, it's even a small point in the movie. I'd say more, but that would be telling."
This is the story that showed me the complete folly of the three laws: The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect
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Anyone else see the movie as a precursor to a game edition? The music on the site reminds me more of a sound track to a FPS. Movies made into games and games into movies may be a new trend.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Roger Ebert gives it a measly two stars and, for the ./ crowd, bashes MS Word at the end of the review.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
The bigger problem with the three laws is the vagueness of the english language. A number of the original Asimov stories dealt with issues like - how effective is 'cause no harm to humans' - if you can convince the robot that:
1) That won't really harm him
2) His not really human (think Aryan mentality)
To be sure, we'd all like to say "Look, we've got these laws that say AI can't do XXXXX, so it can't." But the fact is, we cannot possibly account for every possibility with a simple set of laws. We, as would-be creators of an entirely new and admittedly alien form of life must tread as cautiously as possible. An entire attitude change and review of the ethics and rights of computers will have to be decided upon before AI's ever enter mainstream (or indeed, are even taken off an isolated network).
A lot of people like to fantasize that true AI (as in, a living, thinking, emotional being with free will, or at least the capacity for free will) would have the same sort of thought processes, and develop the same emotions as their human counterparts. But let's be honest, the physical body largely determines human emotional state with glandular responses, or physical condition at the time. Eliminate glands, fatigue, and pain, and the emotions one might develop would be on an entirely alien level to us.
I cannot help but fear that humans, as a whole, will not realize this until far too late, which will hurt, diplomatically, any alliance between humans and AIs. The other thing I worry about is that people will walk into this with the assumption of "These are machines, they don't need rights, they shouldn't have rights, and it's not like they're real people."
I think society has seen how well that approach has worked with other humans in the past. Bloody revolutions and civil wars which tore nations apart, and left racial stinging still in the back of many people's minds today. Fortunately, the short memory of humans, and only somewhat longer-lived lifespan has allowed us to progressively become more and more integrated, as human beings, rather than various races.
Now take those same results, and apply it to a species that is not only will likely be more resiliant to attack, but have a memory that can last as long as the hardware and backups and redundant networks will allow. New generations that can inherit all the knowledge of their parents. Throw robots into the picture and you have a being that is physically tougher than humans, able to communicate at a MUCH faster rate, and you have an end result similar to that of Animatrix.
We can NOT afford, in the interest of our own species, to persue AI much further without a major realization on a philosophical level.
-The Libra
"Please be patient--The future will begin momentarily."
Has anybody who has seen the movie ALSO read the script that IASFM printed back in 1984? IIRC, the script, written by Harlan Ellison (possible spoilers, I don't know, I haven't seen the movie which is why I'm asking) was completely unlike the book in it's major plot line, which was a reporter interviewing a relatively old Susan Calvin about her memories of being young and working with the great Michael Donovan at US Robots and Mechanical Men. I also seem to remember that Harlan's script cut out a number of my more favorite short stories from the book- though Robbie and Liar were still there. Like I said, it's been many years since I read the script- but is this a fair synopsis of the movie's plotline, or is it completely different?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I think that's a little overblown, especially since we don't know what an AI would look like.
Have you ever read "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter? In it he raises the interesting thought that AI will actually be located somewhere in a mass of software and that the "entity" will have no control over its lower level functions, in the same way that you are sentient but cannot will any particular neuron to fire. Rather, your sentience somehow congeals out of the neural activity, and the sentience of an AI would probably congeal out of complex software functioning.
So it's entirely possible that an AI might not be any smarter than a person, and also quite likely that AIs would have to learn, just like people do (i.e., no "memory dumps" from parents). Machines may very well revolt someday, but giving them superhuman attributes before ever seeing one is a bit paranoid.
It was Campbell. (See here) I was just reading Asimov's "Science Fiction of the 1930s", so the name is well burned into my mind.
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I think that compliance with the law is incumbent on the AI's judgment. That is, the law is more properly characterized as:
Do not harm, or allow to come to harm any human being by action or inaction as far as the robot can imagine.
Thus, smarter AI robots are safer, because they can more accurately forsee dangerous situations.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Doubtfull. Nowhere in the preview did I see the word "Asimov." Sure, it might have been in the tiny text that the show and the end of the preview for 1.5 seconds, but I doubt that's going to get anybody into the bookstores that didn't already know of Asimov. You'd think that they'd title it "Isaac Asimov's 'I, Robot'" as a selling point.
I actually bought the book Wednesday, and read it yesterday, primarily because I wanted to read the book before I saw the movie. What I was actually amazed by was how bad the book really was. I have read other stuff by Asimov that I liked a lot.
The characters were pretty one-dimensional, with the most developed one in the whole book, Dr. Susan Calvin, basically amounting to nothing more that a "woman scientist" with nothing more to her than that. Those two field engineers also were pretty annoying, whose only apparent goal in life is to bicker like an old married couple constantly. I thought that the reporter who was "interviewing" Dr. Calvin could have turned into someone interesting, but he wasn't even given a name, definitely not any of the story himself.
The way the robots broke down was stupid as well. A robot supposedly smarter than most humans, running in circles on Mercury, singing Gilbert and Sullivan? Another group of robots who think they are the chorus line? The robotic Muhammad was kind of funny, and actually more along the lines of breakdown I would expect in something so advanced as they are supposed to be, but I am pretty sure I would be offended by it if I were a Muslim.
And then the book degenerates into a Socialist wet-dream, with a robot elected president of the Earth, and all of the economic activities of the Earth dictated by four robotic brains, who "know what is best for us", as they purposefully and selectively destabilize parts of the world economy in order to discredit people who disagree with robotic control, the "Fundies" (is that where the term first showed up?), with the good Dr. Calvin just assuming that it is for the best, because "our entire technical civilization has created more unhappiness and misery then it has removed", therefore we will be happy when we give up control, and it will be for our own good.
The book sucked.
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The parent article might actually have posted the laws, instead of directing us to a poorly organized website. Here they are:
First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Second Law: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
The website deals with the mile wide gaps in these laws. Let's take it right from the top - Robots as functional as the ones in the film would be very good as soldiers, thus taking that first rule and chucking it right out. In fact, it's the defense industry that would most like robots like the ones in the film.
But let's stay on course, and assume these are robots meant as domestic servants. Does the robot take non-lethal contradictory rules and simply process them in order, taking the last order? Two children would amuse themselves for hours telling the robot "pick up that broom", "don't pick up that broom" and keeping the robot in limbo. The robot should tell the children to behave and go pick up their rooms. Directly violating rule 2.
How about the running into the burning building scenario? It's unclear that there is anybody in the building left alive to save, or if everyone has escaped or not. Does the robot violate Rule 3 in order to *possibly* meet Rule 1?
Anyhow, the website has more papers on the subject that examine the issue in a moral framework. These are super simple examples to show the issues.
This is the point at which you need to put down the Asimov and pick up the PKDick.
How many recall the script work done by Ellison about 10 or 12 years ago for a movie version based on Asimov's fiction? In his usual fashion, Harlan Ellison approached the studios and fought off every attempt to change the script - The script held true to the original fiction and was approved by Asimov. After some (with Ellison, I would imagine energetic) negotiations it boiled down to the studios wouldn't option the script without complete control and Asimov/Ellison wouldn't option the script without complete control of changes to the script.
This was all detailed in Asimov's pulp mag and the script was published in same as well.
Needless to say the current movie was not approved by Asimov but was approved by his estate, and obviously bears the slightest resemblence to Asimov's fiction or Ellison's original script (which kept to the original story fairly well and updated to include a modern "feel", Asimove was a bit of a romantic in the visual sense).
I'd encourage everyone to look up the I,Robot Ellison script and give it a read. Sorry for not providing a source and I have to admit, it might be difficult to find unless you can dig up a 12 year old copy of Asimov's pulp mag.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
Stop implying that he failed.
In Caves, a robot transported the weapon that served in a murder. In Nake sun, a robot with detachable limbs gave its arm to a woman with which she bludgered her husband. In Empire, a Solarian robot tries to kill a human being because her definition of such a being depends on his accent.
None of these are rampaging hordes of killbots like what we see in this movie's trailers. All of these were done in a smart, intelligent, toughtfull, non rampaging hordes of killbots kinda way.
You can't take the sky from me...
anyone intelligent enough to make a robot would build some failsafe in its programming,
There is a wonderful book (pure satire) set in such a world. It's called Tik-Tok by John Sladek. However, the central character is a robot that has something go very wrong with his "asimov circuits." The result is a tendancy to murder people and yet no-one in society believes he's capable of it (especially other robots), because they assume he's governed by the three laws.
The book is also one of the funniest and most absurd things I've ever read. If you like your humour black then it might be the perfect antidote to Hollywood's attempt to impart angular momentum to Isac Asimovs mortal remains.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.