Human-Robot Ethics:A Case Study Of Asimov’s "Robot Novels"

Since the 20 th century,the advancement of bionic engineering,biological cloning and gene editing has been reshaping the way of human existence,which is embedded in human body at an incredible speed.While simultaneously artificial intelligence technology limits the human activity space in the opposite direction and shapes the human-like nature of robots.These changes in technology have brought people not only excitement and pride,but also fear and anxiety.During the process,people began to reflect on how to reconstruct the essential cognition of “human” and the resulting“relationship” in the post-human context.Reconstruction means breaking the criteria of traditional humanism,and human beings themselves are becoming the object of technological transformation.These thoughts have promoted the occurrence and development of science fiction,which,with its unique inclusive and predictive imagination,has shaped the post-human consciousness and form concerning subject,human nature and various ethical forms of relationship,showing the science fiction writers’ insights and thoughts on the future of mankind.Isaac Asimov(1920-1992)self-evidently takes the leading role.And thus,Campbell(1910-1971)called him “one of the greatest science fiction writers in the world”.Asimov’s science fiction is especially focused on “robot novels”,which reflect his ethical thinking about the relationship between robot and human beings in the development of science and technology and mechanical civilization,or the relationship reasoning of “the fierce sword”.Asimov’s works are scientific as well as ideological.Through narration of transcending space in the vast atmosphere,Asimov deduces the contradictions,anxiety and fear in the real world,and embodies humanistic concern.The arrival of post-human society,in which science and technology have become the fundamental power to shape human beings,requires us to reconstruct the relationship between human and robot.We should abandon the anthropo-centrism of the dual relationship between human and robot,and the“dystopia” paradox in the post-human landscape,namely robot surpassing human or robot replacing human.Looking forward to the future world,we should be in a coexistence field,and the two should be the others simultaneously.The other of this is in common--human and robots are inter-subjectivity,and they are subjective/objective others in the sense of equality.With the rapid development of science and technology,especially in the context of the 100 th anniversary of Asimov’s birth,it is necessary to systematically sort out the subject,consciousness,boundary,law,morality,technology and ethics involved in Asimov’s representative “robot novels” from a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary comparative perspective.At present,although the research perspectives are diverse,most of them focus on the “Base series” and “Empire series”,and rarely on the “Robot series”,especially the short stories.Therefore,on the basis of previous studies,this paper mainly focuses on Asimov’s “robot novels”,which have rich academic value.The main body of this paper is divided into six parts.The main chapters focus on Runaround,the Bicentennial Man,and the robot trilogy composed of the Cave of Steel,the Naked Sun and the Robots of Dawn.These novels,from the “three laws of robotics” put forward in “Runaround” to the protagonists Lije Baley and R.Daneel Olivaw’s third science fiction inferential novel,the Robot of Dawn,reflect the grand theme behind the novel: the ethical choice given by human beings to the value of technology determines the prospect of human-robot symbiosis in post human society,and “symbiosis” should and must be the form of social existence.The introduction defines the genre of “robot novel” and discusses the human-robot ethics in Asimov’s such novels.Through the literature review of “robot novel” research at home and abroad,we believe that the existing research lacks the theological analysis of Asimov’s human-robot ethics,does not construct a profound ethical view of the robot world and the possible future imagination of human-robot ethical relationship,which also constitutes the starting point of this study and determines the value and significance of this study.The first chapter takes “Runaround” as the research object,analyzing the ethical relationship between man and robot under the “scientific choice” implied in the “three laws of robotics”.Asimov opposed the “hostile” human-robot mode,portrayed the robot as a loyal slave image of human beings,and still adhered to the basic principle of “human superiority”.Nevertheless,the thinking of “human” and “non-human” is the potential significance of the theme of the novel.With the ethical controversy and moral judgment,the paradox between “obedience principle” and “self-protection principle” naturally becomes the external manifestation of the uncertainty of the relationship between “human” and “non-human”.Speedy,as a technological body with the power of subverting tradition and reshaping the future,witnesses the possible contradiction between human and robot.The ethical problems between the depersonalization of the body and the embodiment of technology are the reflection of the times,as well as the unsteadiness and the ethical risks in the human-robot relationship.The second chapter focuses on “the Bicentennial Man”,which mainly discusses the rich internal meaning of intelligence and technology,personality and body.Through the description of Andrew’s persistent pursuit of identity,Asimov wants to convey that robots transcend the basic tool attributes and begin to challenge human subjectivity.It gives the robot the consciousness of pursuing emotion and the identity of human ethics,which is the disobedience to anthropocentrism and the second stage of human-robot relationship: I Want To Be Human.This is the essential philosophy of“human” and “life”.Chapter three focuses on the Cave of Steel,the Naked Sun and the Robot of Dawn.These three texts,also known as “Lije Baley Science Fiction Trilogy”,inherit and continue each other,with Lije Baley and Daneel with superhuman characteristics as narrative lines throughout,representing another change of Asimov’s ethical gaze on human-robot relationship: robots under the carbon-iron civilization have subjective identity and subjective consciousness,and the ethical role of “patron saint” brings crisis and fear to human beings.After the “trilogy”,the narrative content of cyborg’s main body in the perspective of human beings is linked,which causes us to construct the technology,morality,law and other aspects in an intrusive way and to imagine the community.The fourth chapter analyzes the ethical attributes of identity anxiety,interactive rationality and technological embodiment in robot novels.From the perspective of post human,the dissolution of subject status leads to the anxiety of “human” about self-identity,and the embodiment of technology intensifies this fear.“Robot fiction”depicts the unique thinking of science fiction writers on this issue from a detached perspective.The future is a reflection of the present and a metaphor for some living conditions of human beings.The high degree of mutual construction between human and Technology(material)triggers the “robot novel” to pay attention to human self-identity.Technologically embodied human has the dual logical existence of self and other.“Moral materialization” is the ethical framework and orientation of technology to discipline human behavior and form good.The fifth chapter is the conclusion,analyzing the cultural heterogeneity of ethical narration in Chinese and Western science fiction and summarizing Asimov’s “robot novel” imagination of the future human-robot relationship,which is intended to explain how to face and reconcile the relationship in the post human context where the rapid development of technology provides a new way of human existence in the world.We believe that the artificial agent cyberspace will be the way of “human”living in the world.Although people’s ontological thinking about “human”,“life”,“identity”,“other” and “subject” continues,the human organ system in the community space will be a new cultural landscape in the Information Age.Is it “a beautiful new world” or “the end of the world” that human beings are going to face? “Robot novel” can provide us with the answer from the perspective of the possibility of technological embodiment,which is a concrete reflection of literature’s foresight of life.