Resumo de I, Robot - Isaac Asimov

I, Robot is a work of speculative fiction, which is told by way of several short stories as related to a reporter by Susan Calvin. Susan worked as a robophychologist for the United States Robots corporation, and at the time of the interviews, she is ready to retire. The first story reflects on a child's devotion to her robotic "nursemaid," Robbie. Her mother feels that the robot is a poor influence and unacceptable for the purposes of raising a child. Robbie is sold to a factory without the knowledge of the girl. Later, on a vacation, the girl's life is saved by Robbie on a tour through the manufacturing facility to which Robbie had been sold. The mother, who had been so obstinate about getting rid of the robot, allows the girl to have him back in the end. The following three stories follow two robotic testers, Mike Donovan and Gregory Powell. First, they have to deal with conflicts between the laws of robotics which are as follows: 1. A robot cannot cause a human to be harmed through action or inaction, 2. A robot must obey human orders unless they conflict with the first law, and 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as it doesn't violate the first two laws. In their next assignment, Powell and Donovan encounter a robot that recognizes its own superiority to humans. It believes it must "serve" the power converter in a solar energy transfer station, and refuses to accept orders from the two human technicians who are supposed to govern it. Strangely enough, the robot performs its functions exceedingly well despite its disbelief in anything that it has not logically reasoned into existence, like earth. Next, the technicians dealt with a mining robot on an asteroid that controlled several subsidiary "fingers." Whenever the robot sensed a lack of human supervision and experienced an emergency, it and its subsidiaries would cease working. Eventually, Donovan and Powell deduced that it was the personal initiative circuit that had gone haywire. They went into one of the mining tunnels and intentionally caused a cave-in. When this emergency occurred, the robot and its "fingers" stopped functioning normally and resorted to strange, illogical behavior. However, when one of the subsidiary robots was destroyed, the central robot returned to normal. The next tale involves Susan Calvin, her associates, and a mind-reading robot. They realize that the robot is lying to each of them separately, and when all the scientists are within the robot's psychic range; it is faced with a logical impossibility. The robot realizes that it cannot harm a human in any way, including mentally and emotionally. When questioned and finding itself unable to answer the questions without causing pain, the robot collapses into a pile of burned out circuits. The final three stories also involve Susan Calvin and her associates. They are called to assist in the discovery of a lost robot whose first law has been modified so that it cannot intentionally harm a human, but it would not be at fault if it did not prevent a human's death. They end up using the robots training and arrogance against it to catch it, and preventing its release into the world. Next, they are enlisted in using their supercomputer to build a space-warp engine. A rival company had already attempted to build one, but their supercomputer had broken down in the process. When asked to design and build a spaceship with a space-warp engine, U. S. Robotics' computer was asked not to worry about human deaths, which would most likely occur. The computer built the ship and launched two astronauts into the far reaches of the galaxy. They did, in fact, die as the atoms composing them were ripped apart, but they were reassembled once the ship stopped. Thus, though humans did die, it was not permanent, and the machine accomplished its task without breaking its programming. The final story is about a politician who is incredibly popular, that is until rumors start circulating about the possibilitt he is a robot. He attends a rally and tries to make a speech, but protesters insist on him giving concrete evidence that he is not a robot. A man goes up to the podium and asks the politician to punch him. He does, and the reader is left with the possibility that the man that the politician punched may have been a robot too. The final chapter of the book is an extended epilogue reflecting on how the world has changed and how the robots are steadily taking control of our economies and our lives for a purpose only they can understand. We can only hope that the robots continue to allow us relative freedom as they control us and protect us.

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