Robot Visions

What Hacker News says

1. almatabataOct 2023
   This is why i really love the series from Isaac Asimov. He does a great job at exploring the AI questions from the perspective of robots that care for the well being of humans. We need to think about the doom scenario but i think we also need to think about the reverse scenario. If you can build a love for humanity into AI how will it behave.

   The book robot visions has a lot of short stories that explore these questions:

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41823.Robot_Visions

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2. 0xDEAFBEADOct 2026
   >AI computes an optimal outcome and does what is necessary to make that happen.

   That's often true in real-world machine learning as well. See, for example: https://deepmind.google/blog/specification-gaming-the-flip-s...

   I think people need to reject the idea that depicting something in sci-fi automatically means it won't happen. I'm actually reading one of Asimov's books right now (Robot Visions). Asimov mentions that he was the person to coin the term "robotics", and one of his books helped inspire the creation of the first robotics company (Unimation). He also mentions that early rocket experimenters were influenced by H.G. Wells.

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3. tunesmithAug 2018
   Here's the order I read them in:

     I, Robot (1950)
     Foundation (1951)
     Foundation and Empire (1952)
     Second Foundation (1953)
     The Caves Of Steel (1954)
     The Naked Sun (1957)
     The Robots Of Dawn (1983)
     Foundation’s Edge (1982)
     Foundation and Earth (1986)
     Robots And Empire (1985)
     The End of Eternity (1955)
   

   I haven't actually finished the final two because it took me a while to find Robots And Empire. I'll have to reread from the beginning.

   Here’s Asimov’s recommended order. This one is pretty much chronological for characters, I think, which would spoil some narrative twists. Kind of like how watching the Star Wars prequels first would spoil The Empire Strikes Back.

     Either The Complete Robot (1982) *or* I, Robot (1950)
     The Caves Of Steel
     The Naked Sun
     The Robots Of Dawn
     Robots And Empire
     The Currents Of Space (1952)
     The Stars, Like Dust (1951)
     Pebble In The Sky (1950)
     Prelude To Foundation (1988)
     Forward the Foundation (1993)
     Foundation
     Foundation and Empire
     Second Foundation
     Foundation’s Edge
     Foundation and Earth
   

   And here is an Expanded Chronological order, which includes books written by other authors after Asimov died:

     I, Robot
     The Rest of the Robots (1964)
     The Complete Robot (1982)
     Robot Dreams (1986)
     Robot Visions (1990)
     The Positronic Man (1992) (co-written by Robert Silverberg)
     Mother Earth (1948) (minor inconsistencies)
     The Caves Of Steel
     The Naked Sun
     Mirror Image (1972)
     The Robots of Dawn
     Mirage (Mark W. Tiedemann) (2000)
     Chimera (Mark W. Tiedemann) (2001)
     Aurora (Mark W. Tiedemann) (2002)
     Have Robot, Will Travel (Alexander C. Irvine) (2005)
     Robots And Empire
     Caliban (Roger MacBride Allen) (1993)
     Inferno (Roger MacBride Allen) (1994)
     Utopia (Roger MacBride Allen) (1996)
     The Stars, Like Dust
     The Currents Of Space 
     Pebble In The Sky
     Prelude To Foundation
     Foundation’s Fear (Gregory Benford) (1997)
     Forward the Foundation (MINUS the final section of the epilogue)
     Foundation and Chaos (Greg Bear) (1998)
     Foundation’s Triumph (David Brin) (1999)
     Foundation
     Foundation and Empire
     Second Foundation
     Foundation’s Edge
     Foundation and Earth
     The End Of Eternity (not really in order apparently, kind of in its own time)
     Nemesis (1989) (not really in order, kind of on its own)
   

   I got these lists from somewhere online years back, I think a stackoverflow site, but I'd avoid them because they also talk about spoilers even in listing the names of the books.
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