WHOSE REVOLUTION?

The 2004 movie 'i, Robot' was inspired by the eponymic series of novels by Isaac Asimov, where the author delineated the 'three laws of robotics', which were re-used in many subsequent works of science-fiction.
The film is a sort of adaptation of Čapek's scenario, as it imagines an American society were robots are designed to serve and protect humans. In 'i, robot', the human-oriented aspirations of artificial servants are ensured by the 'three rules of robotics.' These were outlined by Asimov himself, and re-used as a central line of the movie. Like in R.U.R., the apex of the story arises when robots revolt against their human masters and take control of their lives.

Domin: Mankind would never be free of the robots, it would never be
possible to regain control of them(...) The end of human history, the end of civilisation

Dr. Gall: I was making them into people. I sent them off course. Now they’re better than we are in some
ways. They’re stronger than we are.

Fabry: And what’s that got to do with the robots’ revolt?

Dr. Gall: Oh, it’s got a lot to do with it. Everything, I should think. They stopped being machines-do you hear me?-they became aware of their strength and now they hate us. They hate the whole of mankind. I’m the one to blame.

“Robots of the world! We, the first union at Rossum’s Universal Robots, declare that man is our enemy and the blight of the
universe.”

Domin: I wanted mankind to become his own master!

"Laws are made to be broken"

Radius (robot): I wish to have no master.

Helena: Nobody would give you orders. You’d be just like us.

Radius: I wish to be the master of others.

Helena: I’m sure they’d put in an office in charge of lots of robots, Radius. You could be the other robots’ teacher.

Radius: I wish to be the master of people.

Helena: You’ve gone mad!

Radius: You can put me on the scrap heap.

Domin: This is all nonsense. They say here that they’re more developed than man, more intelligent and stronger, that man is a parasite on them. This is all simply vile.

FIRST LAW
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

SECOND LAW
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

THIRD LAW
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

In both fictions, the human masters come to realise the possibility of a robo-lution. In R.U.R., it is enabled by changes in their construction. In 'i, robot', the three laws become self-contradictory and lead the robots to see humans as dangerous to themselves. A potential uprising is thus caused by a 'default' which ultimately humanises robots.

In Cartwright's report too, slaves who behaved against their 'servant nature' were considered detracted by a disease 'specific to slaves'. A potential uprising is thus caused by a 'default' which ultimately humanises robots (a bit more).

So, robots become more human. But their gain in humanity, besides marking progress, also signifies the weakening of humans' master position.
When robots become able to feel and think, they question the very ontology of human beings.
As limits get blurred, the difference between them and robots also shatters. Robots become slowly assimilated to humans, and humans to robots.

There we can find a re-casting of the Hegelian Master-Slave dialectics. Robots were thought to free mankind from enslaving labour, yet they ultimately threaten their humanity.
And the masters become slaves to their servants.

The imaginaries of robots and their revolution, drawing from historical instances of human slavery, are thus rooted in a master/slave binary, in which one can only be the master of the other.

What if we were never really the 'masters' of robots.

But what if our relation to robots was more complicated than that? 

What if the robo-lution occurred already? 

"Drapetomania, or the disease causing slaves to run away"