Three Laws: Scientific Principles or Plot Devices?

I, Robot opens today, and I've been bracing myself for a slew of stories about how the movie gets Isaac Asimov all wrong. (Actually, in all fairness, if I go see the thing, I might well come out of the theater saying the same thing.) Edward Rothstein fills NYT readers in on how the movie is at odds with Asimov's techno-optimism, but from there the piece declines sharply into a litany of how other sci-fi films view technology. Still, he offers up an intriguing tidbit: if the movie doesn't seem much like the book, it's because the producers had a completely different script in their hands, then bought the rights to the Asimov material and wedged some useful bits into their existing storyline.

Chris Suellentrop, over at Slate, seems more interested at first in observing the Grand Master's speed at the typewriter, but then he delves into the text, and instead of exploring science fiction films in general, he considers other misbegotten adaptations of Asimov, including, cheekily, Aum Shinrikyo's admiration for the Foundation trilogy. He also references the recurring allegation that Al Qaeda may have picked up its name from the Arabic translation of that sci-fi landmark...

Meanwhile, New Scientist wonders about the relevancy of the Three Laws to actual robotics, and the results aren't going to make his fans happy:

"Asimov's laws are about as relevant to robotics as leeches are to modern medicine," says Steve Grand, who founded the UK company Cyberlife Research and is working on developing artificial intelligence through learning. "They stem from an innocent bygone age, when people seriously thought that intelligence was something that could be 'programmed in' as a series of logical propositions."