I, Robot (The Robot Series)

“Why, that correct data is indeed given, and correct answers are indeed received, but that they are then ignored. There is no way the Machine can enforce obedience to its dictates.”

Perhaps roboticists as a whole should now die, since we can no longer understand our own creations.”

“Probably not. But what data is this you refer to? No textile chemist knows exactly what it is that the buyer tests when he feels a tuft of cotton. Presumably there’s the average length of the threads, their feel, the extent and nature of their slickness, the way they hang together, and so on. —Several dozen items, subconsciously weighed, out of ye

“Very well, then, Stephen, what harms humanity? Economic dislocations most of all, from whatever cause. Wouldn’t you say so?” “I would.” “And what is most likely in the future to cause economic dislocations? Answer that, Stephen.” “I should say,” replied Byerley, unwillingly, “the destruction of the Machines.”

“I, on the other hand, am a finished product. I absorb electrical energy directly and utilize it with an almost one hundred percent efficiency. I am composed of strong metal, am continuously conscious, and can stand extremes of environment easily. These are facts which, with the self-evident proposition that no being can create another being superi

“You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason—if you pick the proper postulates. We have ours and Cutie has his.”

It rejects that datum.

you that it cannot be disobeyed, either,

“But you are telling me, Susan, that the ‘Society for Humanity’ is right; and that Mankind has lost its own say in its future.”