I, Robot

Yesterday, we saw I, Robot, a good science-fiction movie, with nice acting from Will Smith, good special effects and a very good storyline. It is comparable to Minority Report, which doesn’t come as a surprise, since both are adapations of great scince-fiction writers’ stories (Minority Report is from Philip K. Dick while I, Robot is from Asimov.

Now the thing about good science-fiction is that it makes you think, and I, Robot is no exception. Beware, spoilers to come.

The main idea of I, Robot is that robots are now a commodity. All robots obey the three laws of robotics which are hard-wired into their system. The three laws go like this:

1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Now the whole idea behind the plot is that the robots evolve until considering that application of the first law implies that the robots must take control of humans lives, because humans are the biggest danger to other humans. To the robots, that is the only way to correctly protect humans, even if this implies denying them any form of freedom and making them basically prisoners.

This clearly underlines the fact that “a will to protect”, is often the first step towards a pure dictatorship, and the favourite excuse of many tyrants. All the more troubling is the fact that it is often in good faith that some become dictators while trying to protect. Hence, we must always be critical of any kind if protection that limits our liberties, and be suspicious of those who claim to protect us against ourselves, or know better than us what is good for us.

This reminds me of Benjamin Franklin‘s famous quotation:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.