Beauchamp is an American critic and educator, who has written extensively on science fiction. In the following essay, he examines the way in which technology is characterized in Asimov's robot novels and stories, including I, Robot.

Hassler is an educator, poet, and author of Comic Tones in Science Fiction (1982) and Isaac Asimov (1989). In the following essay which focuses on I, Robot and the Foundation trilogy, he explores Asimov's use of Enlightenment philosophy, with particular emphasis on the law and order ideas of John Locke, William Godwin's principle of Necessity, and John Calvin's religious determinism.

Fiedler is an educator and author of children's and young adult books. Mele is a poet, editor, and journalist. In the following essay, they examine the development of robots and robotics in I, Robot, and explore some of the ethical consequences of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.

In the following excerpt, Thomsen compares I, Robot with the works of Stanislaw Lem, contending that Asimov's writings fail to realistically address the ethics of future technological problems he envisions.

Suvin is an educator, critic, and author of Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979) and Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction (1988). In the following excerpt from an essay in which he examines the ethics of technology in the science fiction writings of Asimov, Ivan Yefremov, and Stanislaw Lem, he examines the development of the robots—from "doll" in the first story to "god" in the last—in I, Robot.

In essence I, Robot is a collection of indifferent short stories given a spurious novelty by mechanical transformation. But SF requires re-thinking, not mere re-clothing. In the very first story, Robbie, a nursemaid robot, is described as a primitive type, made before the secret of conferring speech on them had been discovered. Yet, inferentially, his programming must have been incredibly complex, and the inclusion of speech-mechanism would have been the merest subsidiary detail. The potentially devastating...

In the following review, the critic favorably assesses I, Robot.