Safety and Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in I, Robot

Personally, I am a big fan of Will Smith. From his solo rap CDs to his 2000s movies, I like almost all of the media he influences. One of these movies is named I, Robot, an early 2000s sci-fi movie starring Will as the lead role.

I, Robot follows a cop named Del Spooner (Will Smith) as he wrestles with his inner hatred for technology, mainly the highly advanced AI robots that walk the streets with humans, all of which as servants to them. On the eve of a technical upgrade to the next version of these robots, the creator mysteriously kills himself. This is where Del picks up the trail towards a robot, later named Sonny, who has emotions and dreams. Del is overly cautious, and believes that Sonny killed the creator in cold blood, but as the story continues we learn that Sonny was made to show Del that something is not right with the new version of the AI in the upgraded robots. As Del and friends storm the tower to figure out why the CEO of the company that makes the robots decided to corrupt the AI, we find out and the CEO was not the villain, but the AI that ran the company had learned “too much” and decided to enslave the human race. Using the power of friendship and the fact that Will Smith can do anything in the early 2000s, they were able to stop the corrupt AI and save the human race.

The movie’s AI is very interesting to me. The older models follow the three rules of robotics perfectly, however as they add in emotions and thought the AI corrupts itself if not monitored and “raised” by someone. To implement this older AI you would just have to follow the three rules of robotics, but to implement the newer AI, you would almost have to become a parent to the AI, and raise and train it as a child. All things considered, the older AI was very safe, and had no problems according to the police department. The newer AI was safe to an extent, as long as it was properly taught right and wrong. Ethically, the newer AI was extremely bad, as it was allowed to not give free control to the human race.

Overall I liked the movie, and it is one of my favorite Will Smith movies (still cannot beat I Am Legend). However, I feel like it is not a good representation of AI, and a very early exposure to fear over AI takeover. I do not know if we can actually train a computer to think and feel, but if we did we must take precautions against AI learning how to murder in cold blood. Overall, I, Robot is a movie I would suggest to watch, and the interesting version of AI in the movie will still make you think hard about what AI is to us today.