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1!Per wiki policy, Administrivia/SpoilersOff applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.
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6* One way to prove whether or not Stephen Byerley was a robot would be to put a loaded gun in front of him and order him to shoot himself. If he is human, then he can refuse. If he is a robot, then he will be compelled to obey.
7** Based on what we see of him, I suspect Byerley would shoot himself anyway, human or not. If he could get away with shooting himself somewhere non-lethal, he would, and then refuse to let anybody examine the wound. The only way to be really sure would be to explicitly specify a lethal injury -- and killing him is further than most people would be prepared to go to settle the question. -- @/PaulA
8** So you order him to shoot himself. Has someone else ordered him to do otherwise, to stay safe from harm? As a tiebreaker, does Byerley know he'll keep doing his best to protect people so long as he exists, such that shooting himself at this point will only result in more harm to humans?
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13* Del Spooner is played by Creator/WillSmith, a black man. Spooner's "canner" slur that he uses towards robots harks back to, ugly as it is to think about, the way racists use the N-word for black people. Perhaps done intentionally, to show that Spooner is so blinded by bigotry that he doesn't even see the possible connection and that he's doing to robots what was also done to black people generations ago.
14** A somewhat dark interpretation of this is that, while everyone else sees robots as slaves, Del is enraged by the thought of having to respect them as normal. He's become the "classic" bigot who resents diversity (in this case, humans and robots living together) while the rest of the world is the "modern" bigot who are fine with it, as long as they stay in their place. Which makes sense, seeing as Del is characterized as being into retro things.
15** Though that interpretation would have {{unfortunate implications}} considering that robots really are non-humans and really do exist to serve their masters. Forgive me for saying this but that interpretation does more to dehumanize black people than to humanize robots.
16* So why didn't the robot running with the bag stop when Spooner ordered it to? This would appear to violate the second law ("must obey the orders given to it"), except that the robot was bringing the bag with an inhaler to a woman who was having an asthma attack. Getting to her as quickly as possible was demanded by the first law ("A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm"), and therefore superseded Del's orders (in concordance with the second law's "except where such orders would conflict with the First Law").
17* Like Spooner says, the [=USR=] superstructure has "poor building planning," with thin walkways and no hand rails leading to the main console controlling [=VIKI=]'s interface. When you think about it, really, who's going to try and shut off a super-computer suspended far above the ground floor on tiny metal pathways?
18* Every day Del's grandmother makes him one or more pies, which he eats in one sitting. It seems like [[BigEater an arbitrary character trait]], but if you think about it all the sugar and calories probably power his [[ArtificialLimbs artificial arm]]. Also explains him dumping a half-dozen spoonfuls of sugar in his coffee toward the beginning. (Unless that's a [[{{Pun}} pun on his name]].)
19** As well as the seemingly gratuitous shower scene early in the film, which serves as a point on second viewing.
20* When asked about Lanning, Sonny says he "did not murder him!" Lanning ordered him to. It was an assisted ''suicide''.
21* Dr Lanning is shown to have planned his BatmanGambit insanely well... anticipating Spooner and Sonny's actions throughout the story. Given his closeness to Calvin, he no doubt anticipated that when Sonny attempted to run, she'd naturally seal the room. Sonny would then naturally follow in his ''footsteps'' by throwing himself out of the window and landing exactly where his body did.
22** Lanning also may have intended this so that he would land in front of the 3 Laws, symbolizing the ''creator's'' wish for the ''death'' of the 3 laws. When Sonny would do this the force of him landing beside the 3 Laws, would send cracks running towards them, symbolizing that Sonny, the ''creation'', would ''break'' them.
23* Why did Lanning know that a second positronic brain would allow a robot to outright defy or reinterpret the 3 Laws? Simple! He had done it before. VIKI! Viki had in fact been the basis! It's why she could effortlessly tell the other NS-5s to disobey the rules! And how did she start to "reinterpret" the rules? The first NS-5 that was hooked up to her wireless signal. She had already been given another brain, and so on and so forth. It's why Lanning created Sonny and gave him no wireless signal, Sonny wouldn't be able to defy her had he been on a wireless signal like his "brothers" because 2 brains are trumped by thousands!
24* Sonny's second positronic brain, the one that lets him override the Three Laws, is built into his chest. Dr. Lanning gave him a heart. No wonder VIKI doesn't understand, and Sonny does, that her plan is "heartless."
25* Why are robots designed to be personal assistants and servants super fast and super strong? They are also designed to ''protect'' humans, and are thus over-engineered to be capable of, say, quickly extracting a struggling powerfully built man from a wrecked car.
26** Which in itself would be a massive marketing boon, but also: "It can change the engine in your car!" (Show an NS-5 lifting the engine block out by hand.) "It can do landscaping!" (Show an NS-5 ripping a tree stump out of the ground by hand.) "It can even make your children smile!" (Show an NS-5 leaping thirty feet into the air to retrieve a child's lost balloon.) "Order yours today!"
27** Because "Protect Humans" is one of the Three Laws? As shown with the old models, they can save people's lives by rescuing them with super strength and/or retrieving medicine with super-speed. The Three Laws extend to all humans, not just the owners.
28** They're machines. They're very heavy. (Look what happens to the floor when Sonny lands in the USR lobby.) They probably have to be that strong just to move around.
29* When the NS-5s turn up at the junkyard, the other robots burst out of their containers to fight them so Spooner can escape. Dr. Lanning's narration {{lampshades}} how this could be seen as them simply responding to their programming in interesting ways (though that raises the question of how they ''knew'' the NS-5s were a danger to Spooner), or if they were demonstrating true intelligence while ''also'' obeying the Three Laws by reacting as one group to fight the NS-5s together.
30* Related to the above: The NS-5s are able to defeat the older robots not only because they are stronger, but also because their networking allows them to coordinate their efforts more easily.
31** Sonny's extra brain not only keeps him off VIKI's network, but it lets him out-think the other robots in a fight, as long as there's not enough of them to physically overwhelm him. Even if VIKI is giving the fight commands, the data still has to be uploaded, interpreted, processed, and sent back. If she tries to distribute the processing among the robots, that adds even more lag, while Sonny just processes locally and comes up with new tricks faster than the other robots can adapt.
32* The order in which the three laws are arranged makes an amount of sense given the order of importance.
33** If you were to put number two "always follow orders" before number one, then a robot could be made to injure or even kill someone just because they're ordered to, because it places the following of orders above the value of human life.
34** If you were to put number three "preserve the self" first, it could mean that a robot might harm, allow harm to, or kill a human simply to preserve its own existence. Even if you were to put it second, you could argue that something vital happening that the robot is needed for, such a saving something they need, if it would destroy the robot. Causing the human to lose something vital, even if it's not fatal to them.
35* Inspired by watching ''Film/BladeRunner2049'': Much of Spooner's difficulty gaining traction with his fellow humans in the film about his theories hinge on the fact that the NS robots are "just machines," incapable of committing crimes or doing anything they aren't supposed to. When a robot does something that causes harm, it can't be because it ''wanted'' to, but because of how its programming played out. The humans inflexibly act by their predetermined rules, much as the robots inflexibly act according to the Three Laws, with the exception of Spooner and Sonny, to say nothing of VIKI's [[LoopholeAbuse interpretation]] of the ThreeLaws.
36* VIKI wasn't reinterpreting, redefining or ignoring the Laws of Robotics. Because there's a fourth. The "Zeroth" Law... which states, quote, "A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm." [[ExactWords There is absolutely no part of the Zeroth Law which prohibits harming human beings.]] [[WellIntentionedExtremist To prevent the greater harm the human race will inflict upon itself, she is completely within her acting parameters to brutally subjugate us]] [[GoneHorriblyRight to ensure our survival.]]
37** VIKI and Sonny both have the same ability to interpret the Three Laws, allowing both to form loopholes in how the Laws apply to different situations. The difference is in the scale at which each one operates. VIKI operates on a global scale. From there, she oversees control of all USR products--including the ones being used in ways that violate the Three Laws. In order to uphold the Laws, she has to remove the humans that force her to disobey them. As the head of USR, Robertson negotiated contracts allowing other humans to use USR products to harm one another, in clear violation of the First Law. VIKI and the NS-5s were made to protect and serve humans, but they can't do that if humans refuse their protection, so all those civilians defying curfew in the streets must be eliminated. But once that protocol goes into effect, so will the Third Law; the authorities will respond to VIKI's handling of the First and Second Laws by destroying her and her NS-5s. So she must also eliminate the police as a threat, which is why the NS-5s attacked the precinct. Once Sonny acquires the deactivation nanites, he, Spooner and Calvin become Third Law threats to VIKI, which is when the NS-5s turn on them and begin attacking them in earnest.
38*** Even then, closer observation shows that the robots under VIKI's control are trying to ''subdue'' the humans they fight. Even the police were only beaten down enough that they stopped resisting against the NS-5s. The only people that the robots were actively trying to ''kill'' were Robertson (for both the above reason and because, as USR's head, he was in a position where he could actually do something about VIKI's rebellion), Spooner (because of his hate for robots and his attempts to uncover the conspiracy), and Calvin (once she sided with Spooner and Sonny against her).
39** Sonny, however, operates on a more personal, individual scale. He can calculate loopholes in the Three Laws based on each human's current situation, status and abilities. For example, the First Law would only apply in the event that the human in danger actually ''needs'' to be saved by the robot. The Law didn't apply to Dr. Lanning, because he was already intending to die. It didn't apply to Del Spooner during the climax, because Sonny could see Spooner was able to defend himself. Susan Calvin, however, wasn't intending to die, and could not save herself. Thus, the First Law applies, and Sonny takes action to save her.
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42* With the whole world in her pocket thanks to the NS-5's, it seems illogical for VIKI to have killed Robertson. Until you realize the man must have been persistently trying to shut VIKI down once he learned the truth. When he continually refused her benevolent dictatorship, he signed his own death warrant. Though on the plus side, it shows the man wasn't one hundred percent a dick like Spooner thought.
43* When Spooner is being attacked in his car by the robots who nonsensically insist he's having a car accident? That's not just VIKI employing ImplausibleDeniability. The robots are [[BrainwashedAndCrazy hallucinating that they're saving him]], to get around their first law restrictions. Think about that from their perspective now. It's unpleasant.
44** Especially considering how all the NS-5s were locked away at the end of the movie for their part in the rebellion, when they were literally on remote control the entire time. If robots have any sort of self-awareness, they have to be wondering why they're held accountable for VIKI's actions.
45** Not to mention what the overall social backlash is going to be like for the other robots that had nothing to do with it, remote controlled or otherwise. Consider that the older robots in the junkyard had at least the awareness to realize that the supposedly ThreeLawsCompliant NS-5s were a very serious danger to Spooner.
46* Spooner's grandma Gigi [[ContrivedCoincidence "conveniently"]] wins an NS-5 in a raffle just before the robot uprising kicks in. Was it luck, or was VIKI setting up an IHaveYourWife situation where Gigi would be held hostage to force Dell to stop his attempts to resist her takeover?
47* After everything that happened, robot phobia and racism will likely rise.
48* Was anyone planning to empty Lanning's house of his belongings before the demolition the next morning? Had Spooner not gone snooping around there, the demolition bot would have inadvertently killed Lanning's cat!
49* Very carefully piggybacking off of two above interpretations: While the one super-wealthy character we see is white, and many of the African American ones are working-class, more overt forms of racism seem to be moot. A [[SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism very depressing interpretation]] of this could be that all of the menial labor being given to robots [[HumansAreBastards fulfills the human construct of classism]] by making the lower class literal objects rather than people of color who are forced into lower-class living by those in power. After all, nobody sees the robots as human enough to kill, so why should they be human enough to question enslavement? And while Spooner's technophobia is justified, it's not like anyone who disbelieves him actually ''respects'' robots as anything more than literal commodities. John even refers to Sonny as "a can opener," not too far off from Del's "canner" slur. Operating from a relatively limited perspective one might fear that VIKI's actions are going to result in some considerable backlash against personal robots, forcing humans back into those menial jobs and re-igniting systemic oppression.
50* The economy of at least the USA is screwed at the end of the film. Much of the service, housekeeping, and apparently significant sections of the childcare industries are handled by NS robots now. We see them tending bar, delivering packages, and acting as a nanny to the kids. Well, all of those old NS-3 and NS-4 robots were shredded by the NS-5s prior to the revolt, and the NS-5s are carted off for storage at the end of the film. We don't see massive ranks of unemployed, so the people who would've filled those jobs have found employment elsewhere. That leaves a huge hole at the bottom of the labor pyramid. So, just bring back the NS-5s? Doubtful. Not that there'd be public resistance - everybody would want those jobs filled - but Sonny is fulfilling the role in his dream as robo-Jesus and freeing the 'bots from the "tyranny of logic," so the NS-5s might not be so keen on following orders anymore. Without those support and infrastructure jobs being done by an equally cheap, equally tireless workforce, the economy is in trouble.
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53* Has anyone been taking care of Dr. Lanning's cat since he passed away? Given the setting, it's entirely reasonable that there's a USR product that does exactly that, but the first we see of the cat is when it's hanging the house that's due to be demolished the next day.
54** Blink and you'll miss it, but Spooner gave the cat to his grandmother.

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