Robot Dreams - Movie Review Example

Here we encounter a faulty situation of a robot given to dreaming. Again in the movie "I, Robot"2 there is a probability of a Robot getting away with murder. Ironically the movie brings back the same phobia that separates the notion of the human and inhuman (and evil) that Asimov so fiercely detested in the earlier science-fiction stories about technological inventions turning out to be uncontrollable monsters. But the question posed is different - are the three laws quite enough to control something that is given so much power Asimov's intent was to devise a set of rules that would provide reliable control over semi-autonomous machines that were well-engineered, non-threatening, and in 1940, in conjunction with science fiction author and editor John W.

Campbell, he formulated the Laws of Robotics. He subjected all of his fictional robots to these laws by having them incorporated within the architecture of their platinum-iridium positronic brains. Thus the robots physically were incapable to devise or think beyond their architectural scope. The movie faithfully quotes Asimov's three laws of robotics3 but the main thrust of the movie becomes morality/ethics. As the short story challenges our popular notion of robots since it refuses to reiterate another Frankenstein horror, the movie successfully brings that question back: murder of its creator- the humans.

Asimov's original laws (see above) provide that robots are to be slaves to humans (the second law). However, this role is overridden by the higher-order first law, which precludes robots from injuring a human, either by their own autonomous action or by following a human's instructions. This precludes their continuing with a programmed activity when doing so would result in human injury. It also prevents their being used as a tool or accomplice in battery, murder, self- mutilation, or suicide.

The transgression offered by Asimov in the story "Robot Dreams" whether ideas enter the mind of the Robot who, in a Freudian manner starts displaying symptoms of self-consciousness and worse his being - his position in reality relative to the humans and questions why so. Susan Calvin, chief robopsychologist at US Robots, in "Robot Dreams" is disturbed by a robot's dreaming-and by the dreams. The metaphors constantly question the nature of the Laws of Robotics and what it means to be human It questions the mechanical slavery of the superior robots.

Susan Calvin discovers that the robot's brain was designed with a fractal design. The robot's dream came to reveal Freudian truth about his desire to be human. It had also seen other robots working hard, and unwillingly. Dr. Calvin has the robot destroyed after the dreams seem to threaten his conformity to the given (man-made) reality that has been granted by man. The fears of the automata, posing an irrational, dead, cold and soul-less threat to humans, calling into question their identity, sexuality, the basis of creation, and powers of domination revolves within the film.

It illustrates crucial aspects of the human encounter with the mechanical "other." It somewhat resembles the idea of the golem in the legends, who is supposedly man's servant and exists to protect his maker but almost always threatens its master-running out of control, of its evolving skills or latent skills. The film incorporates some elements of the robot stories that appeared in Asimov's 1950 (as a definite mixture and is never true to one single