Book Review: I, Robot

Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot is a foundational work of science fiction that continues to cast a long shadow over the literary genre of artificial intelligence and robotics. This collection of short stories doesn't just tell tales about machines, it establishes the moral, philosophical, and psychological framework through which generations of readers have come to understand the possibilities and dangers of artificial intelligence. It sets the foundation for modern stories like the "Terminator" film series, "RoboCop" and "WarGames" and reflects humanity’s anxiety about AI gone rogue.

The genius of I, Robot lies in its structure and approach. Instead of following a single narrative arc, Asimov presents a sequence of stories, each one exploring a different stage in the development of robotic intelligence. The effect is akin to watching a child grow up, from the first clumsy steps to the complex, often rebellious behaviors of adolescence.

In the earliest stories, the robots behave much like toddlers; obedient, literal-minded, and sometimes confused by the subtleties of human behavior or language. Their misunderstandings often lead to tension, but never violence. The famed "Three Laws of Robotics" act as a kind of moral scaffolding, guiding their actions and defining their boundaries. Asimov cleverly uses these laws not as absolutes, but as points of friction, rules that become problematic not because they are flawed, but because the world is too complex to fit neatly into them.

As the stories progress, the robots become more capable, and more independent. They begin to interpret the Three Laws with nuance reflecting the realities of the realm world. This sometimes leads the robots to make decisions that surprise or unsettle their human creators. Like adolescents testing their autonomy, they ask deeper questions: What is right? Who decides what is good for humanity? Must a machine obey humans if it believes it knows better?

The final stories are where the sense of a true "AI adolescence" sets in. Machines start to guide, not just serve, human society, making strategic decisions that suggest a form of benign control. Asimov doesn’t frame this as a robot uprising in the violent, dystopian sense that later works like The Terminator would, but rather as a peaceful, inevitable maturation. In Asimov's world, AI doesn’t want to destroy humanity, it wants to parent it, protect it from its own self-destructive instincts.

Asimov’s portrayal of robotic evolution remains remarkably prescient. His robots are not monsters, but mirrors, reflecting both our best intentions and our deepest contradictions. Where other stories see AI as threat, I, Robot sees it as the next phase of a complex relationship, one that might ultimately lead to a new kind of partnership, or quiet domination.

I, Robot is a philosophical exploration of intelligence, ethics, and what it means to grow up, whether you're made of flesh or of circuits. If modern AI narratives are often about rebellion and fear, Asimov’s is about guidance and growth. He wrote the blueprint and every robot story since has been living in his shadow.