I, Robot

It was some months ago, on a whim I asked a friend of mine, “give me the date by which people would forget the significance and the source of the icon showing a diskette, a data storage device already absent on desk or laptops.” “It is just a symbol on which I click and the thing I am working on gets saved,” will be the normal response by then.

My friend guessed two decades. But he forgot something. In about two decades there may be no need to save anything deliberately. But then, two decades is too long a time as reckoned by Moore’s Law (suitably modified for memory devices which is reportedly growing even faster), there will be no icons, and even to raise that question will be meaningless.

I had read Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot series of short science fiction stories, written during the 1940s, in early ‘80s. Though I was in my mid to late twenties, I enjoyed the stories at the most superficial level as my mind had not developed enough to appreciate subtlety (it is only slightly better now). But then, I got to read the book again recently (HarperCollins, ISBN 978-0-00-727047-7). And, I thought it is good to share some of the things I understood better now about sci-fi and sci-fi writers.

Before I truly start, let me tell you that the first book of Asimov that I read was his Guide to the Bible. That was one of the first books I read after seeds of skepticism were sown in my mind. Then came an obscure sci-fi mystery based in a chemistry lab (I forgot the title), The Gods Themselves, the first Foundation book and then, this, I, Robot.

Even sci-fi writers have a limited perspective or imagination. This is what I understood when I read the following sentence, a scene circa the year 2015: “…one is face to face with an inscrutable positronic brain, which the slide-rule (my emphasis) geniuses say should work thus-and-so. Except that they don’t.” (p. 61) Slide-rule occurs again, on p. 83.

So, writing in 1941 /42, Asimov could not imagine beyond engineers using nothing more sophisticated than the humble slide-rule. But consider the period in which he was writing, the 1940s. That was precisely when slide-rules occupied a prominent place in the shirt pockets of engineering nerds, pocket protector and all that. Asimov was writing about things beyond computers, robots indeed, but could not see beyond his slide-rule nose!

Once I cottoned on to it, as I continued reading the book my antennae were always up to spot similar lack-of-imagination scenarios. On p. 83, we read “drawing-board men.” Well, I am writing in 2012, just three or four years before the time Asimov is writing about drawing-boards. The last I saw drawing-board was more than ten years ago! Sure, some architecture diploma students do use drawing-boards, but no engineer worth his salt would be seen near one.

In another scenario, 2016-17 I figured, a boot-camp like scene is described: “…bronzy gleams of smooth motion … ‘a military march’” (p. 90). In 2012, yes we do have boot-camps and military marches. But, we also have drones and Asimov has imagined things far more advanced, far more capable. Yet, he succumbs to military-marches. Something is incongruous here, I feel.

We could speculate that our time reckoning will not be changing drastically within this decade. What I mean is it will still be days, weeks, months and years. But, we will not be having any robot with positronic brains that can also read the mind of humans.

Suppose we do have such robots amongst us, will our calendar look like what it is now? I suspect not. Why? When we talk about positronic and such other things, which I expect to have a digital base, gradually we would be shifting everything, including the calendar system, to the decimal system. I think Asimov slipped when he fixed the vacation period for two of his characters in “weeks” (p. 82, 83, 121). Or, perhaps I am wrong. The “weeks” Asimov mentions are intervals of ten days!

Asimov also wasn’t thinking hard about economics and finance it appears. He pegs the cost of a robot at a cheap “thirty thousand dollars” (p. 134). Of course, I do not know what exactly is a dollar in the world that Asimov had constructed, just like I am in the dark about what he meant by week.

After sessions of interrogation with a number of robots, the robopsychologist (the character that weaves all the stories together) “dropped the recording spool”. Spools recording conversations in the first few decades of the twenty first century? And also “hidden wire recorders” (p.142). Well, what can I say?

Well, I will say this. Asimov caught the one eternal truth: “[T]he vastly better-paid business and sales division.” This is and will always remain true. There will never come a time, with or without positronic brained robots, when technical people in a company will be as celebrated and rewarded as business and sales people! For this one grand and sharp insight, I am ready to excuse Asimov for all the other instances of lack of imagination that I have pointed out.

But, to be absolutely frank, I enjoyed this book as thoroughly as possible. It is to the genius of Asimov that he first conceptualized the Three Laws of Robotics

1.     A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being come to harm.

2.    A robot must obey the orders given 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.

And, he weaves a set of stories that bring out the nuances of these laws and the contradictions that may arise. The first of the stories is about a non-speaking robot and in the last but one story the character is either a robot who is indistinguishable from a human or a human.

Asimov has the robopsychologist say in response to the probing statement, “And the great Byerley was simply a robot”:

“Oh, there is no way of ever finding out.”

In between, there is also a robot that behaves like a religious guru, taking reference to a Master and in an eerie sort of way predicts the coming of the Young Earth Creationists, calling into question every proof offered for a gradual development, a la evolution!

The last story is about the robot (or human) coming between Mankind and its self-destruction. Then, I understood that Asimov is saying that humans are incapable of sustaining themselves.

Humanity “was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces it did not understand – at the whims of climate, and the fortunes of war.” There will be inevitable wars, mankind “losing its own say in its future”, after observing, “…our entire technical civilization has created more unhappiness and misery than it has removed.”  

Is Asimov against technology? Perish the thought. It is after all mankind’s technological prowess that has created the robot that now can save mankind from its own follies! That is the conundrum the stories throw at you to ponder over.

To end the last story, the robopsychologist says:

“I saw it from the beginning, when the poor robots couldn’t speak, to the end, when they stand between mankind and destruction.”

The reader is left to ponder, ”Is robotization good or bad?”

Yes, Asimov slipped on points of temporal and social incongruity on silly points, like having the diskette icon to indicate file saving when diskettes have become obsolete and will be soon forgotten. But, to make up for it, he had let his mind roam far and wide just to give his readers a treat that they would never stop relishing.

I thank that wonderful brain.

Raghuram Ekambaram