By the end of “I,
Robot”, the robots take over has become obvious, and at least to Dr. Calvin, it
is clear that the robots have begun to recognize the limitations of humanity
and to try and manipulate humans; all of this while keeping their actions and
intentions unknown. This ignorance that humanity is living in, ignorance of the
robot’s true intentions and goals, is all for the benefit of humanity. In this
case, ignorance truly is bliss. Throughout the book, we can see that the humans
knowing the true intentions of robots has caused pain and destruction – the
feelings of inadequacy and inferiority to the robots plague the humans and
maintain outdated modes for expressing this frustration, such as the “Society
for Humanity”. The robots are only as destructive as the humans believe them to
be.
As much as the humans thought that
the robots constant improvement would be their downfall, the robots came to be
their saviors –the robots took into account all of the aspects necessary for
the happiness and accord of humanity. Throughout the book, the danger caused by
the robots is hinted at, so the ending was unexpected for me. While the three
laws of robotics were not being interpreted in ways that the humans had
expected, the robots were always acting to ensure that the humans were taken
care of, and were constantly improving human society. In the end, the humans
were much more self-destructive than the robots were posing a threat to
humanity. We had created an entity that we never could have foreseen the
consequences of, but by no means were they the cause of our destruction.
This was the same impression I was given at the end of the book. I think even though Dr. Calvin understood how robots really developed the upper hand, she also understood that mankind would be its own destroyer. In this sense I think we inadvertently created the robots to save us from ourselves. Robots seem to work as a tool to keep us content and their logic and reasoning are used to counteract our impulsive and emotional behavior. In no way do we understand the entity we’ve created, but in no way do we understand ourselves any more. It’s interesting to see how even today our planet is plagued by wars, as it has been for as long as man has walked the earth, but in the novel we manage to find peace. Ironically humanity must relinquish its power and put it unknowingly into the robots in order to create a more prosperous and powerful society.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was a great twist - I went through the whole book believing that it would be a conflict situation, but it ended up being a pleasant ending. This ending could be interpreted as an insidious threat or as a guardian angel circumstance. I thought it was more of the latter, since at the end, the humans and the robots have a symbiotic relationship.
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