Truly a classic in of Science Fiction. I have encountered the Three Laws of Robotics many times in other settings, but this was my first time going to the source. The Laws are:

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

Sounds pretty good, right? I thought so too, but most of the stories comprising the book are cases where these simple rules produce unexpected emergent behavior. Then the people have to figure out what’s going on, which usually involves determining how the robot is experiencing the situation to produce the unexpected behaviors within some interpretation of the Laws. This leads to a number of surprises.

Written during the 1940s, I, Robot is in many ways still relevant to a world which is slowly becoming increasingly more populated by robots. To the other extreme, on the other hand, reading about the gear-powered internals of Asimov’s robots was somewhat amusing. How far we’ve come, and inconceivable many aspects of today’s technology were back then. It makes you wonder what the future holds, and how the Laws of Robotics will play a role.