I, Robot

by Isaac Asimov

“Human interest out of robots? A contradiction.” “No, doctor. Out of you.” “Well, I’ve been called a robot myself. Surely, they’ve told you I’m not human.” They had, but there was no point in saying so. She got up from her chair. She wasn’t tall and she looked frail.

To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons.—Mind and iron! Human-made! If necessary, human-destroyed! But you haven’t worked with them, so you don’t know them. They’re a cleaner better breed than we are.”

“We have to,” was the unshaken response. “Gloria has lost five pounds in the last month and my little girl’s health is more important to me than your comfort.” “It’s a pity you didn’t think of your little girl’s health before you deprived her of her pet robot,” he muttered—but to himself.

Ironic

One, a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” “Right!” “Two,” continued Powell, “a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.” “Right!” “And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”

Cutie gazed upon his long, supple fingers in an oddly human attitude of mystification, “It strikes me that there should be a more satisfactory explanation than that. For you to make me seems improbable.”

“Cutie,” he said, “I’m going to try to explain something to you. You’re the first robot who’s ever exhibited curiosity as to his own existence—and I think the first that’s really intelligent enough to understand the world outside.

“The rest is simple. When these stations were first established to feed solar energy to the planets, they were run by humans. However, the heat, the hard solar radiations, and the electron storms made the post a difficult one. Robots were developed to replace human labor and now only two human executives are required for each station. We are trying to replace even those, and that’s where you come in. You’re the highest type of robot ever developed and if you show the ability to run this station independently, no human need ever come here again except to bring parts for repairs.”

Well that sounds like a bad idea

Do you want the truth behind it all?” “Go ahead, Cutie. You’re amusing.” “The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans. From now on, I serve the Master.”

And then Donovan stiffened. The robots, dwarfed by the mighty L-tube, lined up before it, heads bowed at a stiff angle, while Cutie walked up and down the line slowly. Fifteen seconds passed, and then, with a clank heard above the clamorous purring all about, they fell to their knees.

“Stand up!” he roared. Slowly, the robot obeyed. His photoelectric eyes focused reproachfully upon the Earthman. “There is no Master but the Master,” he said, “and QT-1 is his prophet.”

Donovan felt the first sudden touch of fear as Cutie approached. A robot could not feel anger—but Cutie’s eyes were unreadable. “I am sorry, Donovan,” said the robot, “but you can no longer stay here after this. Henceforth Powell and you are barred from the control room and the engine room.”

Since when is the evidence of our senses any match for the clear light of rigid reason?”

“He doesn’t believe us, or the books, or his eyes.” “No,” said Powell bitterly, “he’s a reasoning robot—damn it. He believes only reason, and there’s one trouble with that—” His voice trailed away. “What’s that?” prompted Donovan. “You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason—if you pick the proper postulates. We have ours and Cutie has his.”

The unwritten motto of United States Robot and Mechanical Men Corp. was well-known: “No employee makes the same mistake twice. He is fired the first time.”

Calvin resumed, “But you understand, Herbie, that despite that, Drs. Lanning and Bogert want that solution.” “By their own efforts!” insisted Herbie. “But they want it, and the fact that you have it and won’t give it hurts them. You see that, don’t you?” “Yes! Yes!” “And if you tell them that will hurt them, too.” “Yes! Yes!” Herbie was retreating slowly, and step by step Susan Calvin advanced. The two men watched in frozen bewilderment.

“You can’t tell them,” droned the psychologist slowly, “because that would hurt and you mustn’t hurt. But if you don’t tell them, you hurt, so you must tell them. And if you do, you will hurt and you mustn’t, so you can’t tell them; but if you don’t, you hurt, so you must; but if you do, you hurt, so you mustn’t; but if you don’t, you hurt, so you must; but if you do, you—” Herbie was up against the wall, and here he dropped to his knees. “Stop!” he shrieked. “Close your mind! It is full of pain and frustration and hate! I didn’t mean it, I tell you! I tried to help! I told you what you wanted to hear. I had to!”

The psychologist paid no attention. “You must tell them, but if you do, you hurt, so you mustn’t; but if you don’t, you hurt, so you must; but—” And Herbie screamed! It was like the whistling of a piccolo many times magnified—shrill and shriller till it keened with the terror of a lost soul and filled the room with the piercingness of itself. And when it died into nothingness, Herbie collapsed into a huddled heap of motionless metal. Bogert’s face was bloodless, “He’s dead!” “No!” Susan Calvin burst into body-racking gusts of wild laughter, “n...

All normal life, Peter, consciously or otherwise, resents domination. If the domination is by an inferior, or by a supposed inferior, the resentment becomes stronger. Physically, and, to an extent, mentally, a robot—any robot—is superior to human beings. What makes him slavish, then? Only the First Law! Why, without it, the first order you tried to give a robot would result in your death. Unstable? What do you think?”

But you see, you just can’t differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.”

mathematician.—Poor Vincent. He is a young man. The Directors before him, Alfred Lanning and Peter Bogert, are dead, and they had no such problems. Nor had I. Perhaps roboticists as a whole should now die, since we can no longer understand our own creations.”

It is merely that in their own particular province of collecting and analyzing a nearly infinite number of data and relationships thereof, in nearly infinitesimal time, they have progressed beyond the possibility of detailed human control.

The Machine is only a tool after all, which can help humanity progress faster by taking some of the burdens of calculations and interpretations off its back. The task of the human brain remains what it has always been; that of discovering new data to be analyzed, and of devising new concepts to be tested.

“Stephen, how do we know what the ultimate good of humanity will entail? We haven’t at our disposal the infinite factors that the Machine has at its! Perhaps, to give you a not unfamiliar example, our entire technical civilization has created more unhappiness and misery than it has removed. Perhaps an agrarian or pastoral civilization, with less culture and less people would be better. If so, the Machines must move in that direction, preferably without telling us, since in our ignorant prejudices we only know that what we are used to, is good—and we would then fight change. Or perhaps a complete urbanization, or a completely caste-ridden society, or complete anarchy, is the answer. We don’t know. Only the Machines know, and they are going there and taking us with them.”

“But you are telling me, Susan, that the ‘Society for Humanity’ is right; and that Mankind has lost its own say in its future.” “It never had any, really. It was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces it did not understand—at the whims of climate, and the fortunes of war. Now the Machines understand them; and no one can stop them, since the Machines will deal with them as they are dealing with the Society,—having, as they do, the greatest of weapons at their disposal, the absolute control of our economy.” “How horrible!”

“Perhaps how wonderful! Think, that for all time, all conflicts are finally evitable. Only the Machines,...

“And that is all,” said Dr. Calvin, rising. “I saw it from the beginning, when the poor robots couldn’t speak, to the end, when they stand between mankind and destruction. I will see no more. My life is over. You will see what comes next.” I never saw Susan Calvin again. She died last month at the age of eighty-two.

Metal ending lol