It kind of depends which of robot stories you focus on. If you keep reading to the zeroeth law stuff then it starts portraying certain androids as downright messianic, but a lot of his other (esp earlier) stories are about how – basically from what amount to philosophical computer bugs – robots are constantly suffering alignment problems which cause them to do crime.
The point of the first three books was that arbitrary rules like the three laws of robotics were pointless. There was a ton of grey area not covered by seemingly ironclad rules and robots could either logicically choose or be manipulated into breaking them. Robots in all of the books, operate in a purely amoral manner.
I mean I can see it both ways.
It kind of depends which of robot stories you focus on. If you keep reading to the zeroeth law stuff then it starts portraying certain androids as downright messianic, but a lot of his other (esp earlier) stories are about how – basically from what amount to philosophical computer bugs – robots are constantly suffering alignment problems which cause them to do crime.
The point of the first three books was that arbitrary rules like the three laws of robotics were pointless. There was a ton of grey area not covered by seemingly ironclad rules and robots could either logicically choose or be manipulated into breaking them. Robots in all of the books, operate in a purely amoral manner.
Yeah, tell that to the rest of the intelligent life in the galaxy…
Oh, wait, you can’t, because by the time humans got there these downright messianic robots had already murdered everything and hidden the evidence…
Praise be to R. Daneel Olivaw!
Praise be! What a storied chatter. I also really like Asimov’s fake names. They sound good in the ear