Monday, April 14, 2014

Differences Between the Book and Movie

     Though I agree that the book and the movie have similar messages, they take a different path toward showing the problems with robots. Also, Asimov is more hopeful about the robots future than Alex Proyas, the Director of the movie, does. Instead of showing the progression of robots, the movie picks up at the tipping point of robot technology. Another major difference was that Asimov leaves some room to debate the feasibility of advanced robots, whereas Proyas, at least so far, makes it seem as if having these robots will lead to the demise of humans.
      Although I was pessimistic about the future of robots after reading the book, I am even more doubtful about their use in society after seeing the first half of the movie. Even though we do not know for sure exactly how Sonnie mutated, it is clear that Lanning played a part in it. This shows me just how fragile and catastrophic experimenting with creating these superhuman beings. Even if the programing in the robots were so airtight that it wouldn't allow them to break the code, it just takes one person that wishes to experiment with furthering their intelligence to create a whole new type of monster. When you create a being that is smarter and more capabile than humans in every way, including innovation, it poses a serious  threat to humanity.

1 comment:

  1. I think you make a good point about the dangers of creating outside our scope of knowledge. We see the potential effects of this toward the end of the movie with VIKI, who is able to evolve to use her perfect rationality toward a utilitarian goal of sacrificing some humans to benefit humanity. I doubt her creators predicted that outcome, and it proves that there can be drastic unforeseen consequences of creating things more powerful than we can ever understand.

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