I've always maintained that the Will Smith movie captured the spririt of the Asimov Robot stories, in an accessible way. I never understood the hate it gets.
In the movie you have thousands of robots running around killing and injuring countless humans. That's something I'm quite sure would never happen in Asimov's writing.
Asimov was unique in that he was the first to start with the premise that humans _could_ safely develop advanced robots, rather than using the "robot uprising" trope that everyone before him used (all the way back to the first use of the term "robot" in Karel Čapek's R.U.R.). So, despite that groundbreaking approach, what do we get in the first major motion picture about his robot series? A robot uprising...
At the end of Robots and Empire he allows Mandamus to activate his "nuclear intensifier", which will eventually render the Earth uninhabitable over the course of several decades (thereby driving humanity to colonize more stars). R. Giskard decided it was in the best interest of humanity for them to disperse, but couldn't rule out the possibility that some humans would be harmed in the process, so he permanently shut down.
And I think there are at least some implications that Daneel was at least peripherally involved in much larger events than the person-by-person manipulation we see in the prequel books directly (ie. famines), but he saved himself by keeping himself more remote from them than literally pulling the switch.
Had the master robot in I, Robot actually suffered for its implementation of the zeroth law I think that would have been at least a little more in keeping with Asimov's vision, so I think it's a bit important to recognize that robots CAN do great harm with the zeroth law, there are just consequences.
(and we can probably ignore the fact that the three-Bs extended books resurrected Dors and iirc somewhat even Giskard)
Daneel and Giskard's interventions are scary, but in the end they do appear to be truly in keeping with a species-wide application of the first law, in that their attempts to 'preserve humanity' were not just a rote idea of "keep humanity alive at any cost" but to preserve the components of humanity that they didn't themselves understand like individuality, creativity, and a drive to learn and explore (very star trekky really).
If I want to get too deep into the subject, it seems like a robot that interpreted the first law so narrowly would never be capable of developing a zeroth law to begin with, because its focus would be so intent on a narrow idea of what a human was, ignoring social concepts altogether (as for eg. Solarian robots do).
To be fair though it has been a REALLY long time since I've seen the movie.
I don't know how you can say it both captures the spirit of Asimov's writings while also having a robot uprising as the central plot device. Asimov explicitly rejected the "Frankenstein complex" that was present in robot related sci-fi up to that point.
Also I don't think Asimov's robots would have ever had a slave mode that rendered them immune to application of the laws. They probably still would have gone inoperative before actually carrying out a massacre.
Yes, technically. But practically, every single story showed how some robot was able to reason his way into violating the spirit of the laws. The movie was very crude about showing it, but it was the same concept present in every Asimov short story.
> Asimov was unique in that he was the first to start with the premise that humans _could_ safely develop advanced robots, rather than using the "robot uprising" trope
I, robot the movie did that too. It showed that a robot could glimpse at the spirit behind the laws and act not according to the letter, but according to the spirit of the laws. Finally, he helped the humans thwart the uprising, and the movie ends with the suggestion that he will influence other robots to see his viewpoint.
Huh? There is literally one story (Little Lost Robot) where there is a "loophole" in the laws (and only because the First Law is modified to drop the "or through inaction allow a human to come to harm" bit).
EDIT: in thinking about it further, I guess I'd add That Thou Are Mindful Of Him to the list of "loophole" stories. Still, two examples out of dozens of stories is very much the exception, not the rule.
Reason: the robots decide to redefine the term "human"
Catch that rabbit: robot ignores first law unless forced by humans in a sticky situation (though this one is a bit ehhh)
Liar: to avoid "hurting" the feelings of humans, a mind-reading robot hurts them in a much more real way
Escape: due to a technical interpreation of hyperspatial travel, robot prevents humans from discovering hyperspatial travel. Vilating first law in the long term since humanity couldn't survive without a means of fast space travel.
Evitable conflict: machines decide that the only way to perfectly follow the laws is to take control over humanity, which is the exact thing the laws were supposed to prevent.
Little lost robot: you said it
That's 7 out of the 9 stories in I, Robot. I have noticed this in most of his short stories and novels.
In universe, maybe. But the actual purpose of the Three Laws as a plot device was for them to be violated, and provide the crux of the story that followed.