I, Robot

He just can’t help being faithful and loving and kind. He’s a machine-made so. That’s more than you can say for humans.

‘And that is all,’ said Dr Calvin, rising. ‘I saw it from the beginning, when the poor robots couldn’t speak, to the end, when they stand between mankind and destruction. I will see no more. My life is over. You will see what comes next.’

I never saw Susan Calvin again. She died last month at the age of eighty-two.

The Earth’s economy is stable, and will remain stable, because it is based upon the decisions of calculating machines that have the good of humanity at heart through the overwhelming force of the First Law of Robotics.’

Stephen Byerley continued, ‘And although the Machines are nothing but the vastest conglomeration of calculating circuits ever invented, they are still robots within the meaning of the First Law, and so our Earth-wide economy is in accord with the best interests of Man. The population of Earth knows that there will be no unemployment, no overproduction or shortages. Waste and famine are words in history books. And so the question of ownership of the means of production becomes obsolescent. Whoever owned them (if such a phrase has meaning), a man, a group, a nation, or all mankind, they could be utilized only as the Machines directed. —Not because men were forced to but because it was the wisest course and men knew it