From the NY Times
For Asimov, Robots Were Friends. Not So for Will Smith.

July 15, 2004
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN


At the beginning of the film "I, Robot," which opens
tomorrow, we seem to be in a world that has yet to even
imagine the idea of a robot. It all seems a bit retro, even
by today's standards, let alone 2035, the year the plot
unfolds. Will Smith, as Detective Del Spooner, groggily
shuts off an old-fashioned alarm clock. His bathtub has
claw feet. His footwear? Vintage black Converse sneakers.

Spooner's apartment might even resemble the world in which
Isaac Asimov lived when he wrote the stories in his 1950
book "I, Robot," on which the movie is very loosely based.
The first story appeared in 1939, when Asimov was just 19,
a galaxy far, far away by science fiction standards. The
tales appeared in pulp magazines with names like Super
Science Stories and Astounding Science Fiction.

And though they imagined worlds far in the future - the
first takes place in 1998! - even the pocket calculator
makes no appearance. Asimov's scientists use slide rules.
Aside from the notion of a robot's "positronic brain" (a
term Asimov later called gobbledygook), technological
innovations involve allusions to a "dielectrode plate" and
a "spectroreflector" that even Tom Swift might have found
quaint.

The movie's retro material, then, may be a kind of a wink
at its antique source. But in his book, Asimov also
declared war on those who think about robots with fear and
trembling, dreading the dangers of technological change.
The new movie, though, often seems to oppose Asimov's view.
Spooner hates robots, and he may have good reason. So
Asimov's old battles are being engaged yet again and may be
worth thinking about because they touch on so much more
than android design.

Asimov's robots can certainly seem born of a more innocent,
less knowing world: one loves hearing children's stories,
another malfunctions by drunkenly going around in circles,
a third may or may not be masquerading as a well-meaning
human politician. Surely this gently imagined future is
hopelessly eclipsed now that we have seen the killer
android of "Terminator 2" morph into any human shape out of
blobs of mercury, or watched the machines of the "Matrix"
trilogy rule the post-apocalyptic earth, plugging humans
into energy pods with elaborate software.

The movie, as if troubled by its innocent origins, even
tries to leave the book behind. (A more faithful adaptation
is in a published screenplay for "I, Robot," written in the
1970's by Harlan Ellison.) Any similarities that remain are
on the surface.

This film, directed by Alex Proyas, is actually a hybrid
that developed out of a robotic murder mystery by the
screenwriter Jeff Vintar and was then transformed after the
acquisition of rights to Asimov's book. That hybrid
character exists even in its views of technology. The movie
wants to look backward toward Asimov and sideways toward
Hollywood technothrillers. It promises a fresh embrace of
technology while rounding up the usual technological
suspects. It is torn between the two sides but is far more
interested in one than the other.

This was not Asimov's approach. In 1956 Asimov explained
that before beginning his robot stories he had tired of the
typical robot plot about "the creature that turned against
its creator, the robot that became a threat to humanity."
That plot was there with the very invention of the word in
Karel Capek's 1921 Czech play, "R.U.R." and became
disturbingly perverse in Fritz Lang's 1927 film,
"Metropolis."

"I didn't see robots that way," Asimov wrote. "After all,
all devices have their dangers." For him robots were
"machines, not metaphors."

So the Frankenstein question was irrelevant for Asimov. In
his stories fear of robots is irrational; it impedes
understanding and leads to robotics researchers being
called "blasphemers and demon creators."

The robot, for Asimov, was humanly designed and had
built-in safeguards. His character, the human
robopsychologist Susan Calvin, even asserts that robots
differ from people because they are "essentially decent."
That belief came from Asimov's famous Three Laws of
Robotics, which were hard-wired into every robot. (They
also appear on screen at the opening of the new film.) The
first law guaranteed that a robot could not harm a human
being or through inaction allow a human being to come to
harm; the second was that a robot had to obey human beings
except when doing so would conflict with the first law; and
the third was that a robot had to protect itself as long as
that did not conflict with the first or second law.

But these laws weren't the source of Asimov's optimism.
Asimov kept exploring how complex these laws were, how much
they depended upon interpretation, and how unpredictable
robotic intelligence could become. What if multiple people
are being harmed and a robot had to act? What if one person
had to be harmed to save another? Such dilemmas could cause
robotic confusion and delusion. Asimov said, though, that
an underlying logic would allow the difficulties to be
sorted out.

This was Asimov's rebellion against the Frankenstein plot,
and it was one reason he wielded such influence among
scientists. Even when Asimov's robots begin to resemble
people in intelligence and subtlety, Asimov rarely sees
apocalypse in the offing.

These views made him seem a kind of retro anomaly in later
sci-fi, with its dark Frankensteinian visions of nuclear
horrors and technology run amok. In Kubrick's "2001: A
Space Odyssey" the computer HAL must be dismantled before
it kills more astronauts. In the first "Terminator" film,
the killer android is sent from the future to insure the
dominance of machine intelligence. The mad scientist of old
melodrama becomes the mad machine of sci-fi, often aided by
the requisite greedy corporation: the usual suspects. These
themes run riot in the new film of "I, Robot" as well,
which is what can make it seem so alien to Asimov.

There is, of course, much room for variation and
exploration. Technology can be put in its place. The first
"Star Wars" films, for example, celebrate an almost
pretechnological universe in which the heroes fight with
ramshackle equipment, aided by clanking, whirring droids
and the ancient laws of the Force.

The robot could also become an answer to humanity: its
finest creation and greatest hope. Ridley Scott's 1982 film
"Blade Runner" made the mad scientist and mad corporation
far more nefarious than their robotic creations. And in
Steven Spielberg's 2001 film, "A.I.," robotic intelligence
ends up transcending the human altogether; even flesh
becomes a memory.

But these opposing visions coexist. On the one hand is the
Frankenstein plot, on the other the quest for salvation; on
the one hand is the danger of technology, on the other its
promise. "I, Robot" can't quite decide. But perhaps when it
comes to robots, we are all hybrids.

previews of the movie seem good. But, I have long forgotten the book.

*Spits* It's nothing like the book! They take a fine text that, to my knowledge, never even had the word "gun" in it, and end up with a movie featuring Will Smith running around shooting robots *shakes head*. It's probably fair enough though; the book is a little too cerebral for the average person.

That's what happens when you make a book into a movie. Look at Starship Troopers. I have both movies and the book. The first Starship Troopers was barely based on the book. The only similarities between that book and the movie, were some of the characters' names that were used. That was pretty much it. Even the story was slaughtered for the movie. So, as long as you don't expect the movie to be anything like the book, you'll probably have a good time.

Esq - What did you expect ? That it would be a THOUGHTFUL movie (gasp !) ? If a movies doesn't include guns and violence, it won't sell in today's market .....

too true... too true...

Frogive me, im going to go Aranic Here:
Im trying to overcome the basic dilemma of Machine superiority programming(When the machine AI slaughters the humans, deeming them unneccesary) by incorporating a Command core that states the basic operation template of the program, only able to be modified by neural interfacing with 3 diferent people. above that is a sub-command shell contining current tasks and commands, this is still not modifiable by the program, but can be modified by a neural interface with one person, this shell stores current long-term tasks and ovverides.
The last two shells are program-controlled and dictate short-term function, shell 2 being the short-term task itself, and shell 1 being the actions required to carry out that task. The AI pogramming itself is interfaced with this. It is literally impossible for the AI to override or 'ignore' the Shell 3 and 4 commands, but can ovveride the 1 and 2 commads by deleting them.
The problem with apocalypse-scale AI's is that they do not have this restriction system and can do whatever they want.
Im incorporating this system into my latest 'Prometheus' (AI-7/I) and 'Gaia' (AI-8b/I) projects

Neo - As I said, I knew that it wouldn't sell if it had been based upon the book, but I'm still annoyed. I'm sick of movies being "dumbed down" for the common man !

destroy all robots and advanced computers; a Butlerian jihad is required in order to avoid a Matrix-like ascendancy of the machines.

This is how you can ruin a perfectly good book's reputation. Make a movie for people who've not read it to give them the wrong idea of the story and cause them to be either disappointed because the book is nothing like the movie or prevent them from buying the book because the movie was so bad.

Good point Indy, but that's Hollywood for you *shakes head*.

I see that Taw is back to his "effervescent" self .

I think Taw forgot to take his medication.

"Violence is the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived."

I think the problem is that all classic SF writers wrote their books because they felt they had sth to say. Todays movies are made because the filmmakers feel they could make a profit (and that references to classic writer upon whose books the films are supposedly made could attract audience that otherwise would not come to see the movies). Consumerism... Hollywood is just one (tho probably the most prominent) example. Thinking soils the brain, so to speak...

Wisdom comes with age. But sometimes age comes alone...

Edited by - zlo on 7/16/2004 11:53:42 AM

it was a book? I didn't know that

It looks like the movie is doing really good, it has passed piderman and is number one in the US.