Tuesday 2 October 2018

Robots In Capek, Asimov And Anderson

Capek's "roboti" are synthetic, conscious, humanoid organisms. See R.U.R.

Asimov's robots are artificial, mechanical, humanoid bodies with conscious "positronic" brains.

"...a versatile machine with a program capable of some learning and much adaptation, nevertheless just a robot and unaware."
-Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire (New York, 1995), 5, pp. 64-65.

In the third case, "learning" has to mean "reprogramming," not conscious learning. "...just a robot and unaware..." denies the Capekian and Asimovian meanings of "robot." Capek coined the term.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

We do see conscious, self aware, self learning AIs in some of the earlier works of Anderson, such as Muddlehead (in the Falkayn stories), and the ancient AI on Wayland in A CIRCUS OF HELLS. I have wished more than once had given us a few more pages about that AI!

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
Anderson has AIs, including in this series, but it was his use of the word "robot" that I was focusing on.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I was thinking of robots as being AIs in the Asimovian sense. Anderson's use of "robot" struck me as strange for a reader, like me, who has read Asimov's robot stories.

Sean