A.O. Scott, writing at the New York Times, has some interesting thoughts about what it means to be human. Suspend your disbelief and imagine a society in which robots are common within our life times. Come on. It is not that hard to do. If you are reading this blog on a laptop or handheld, you are using technology that seemed unlikely, the truly personal computer, little more than a decade ago. Scott is wondering about humanity and boundaries after viewing I, Robot, the new Will Smith vehicle, based on short stories by Isaac Asimov.

The plot is basic detective story. An investigator is probing the murder of an elderly scientist. He believes the killer may be a robot. That, as any science fiction fan can tell you, is impossible because of the first rule of robotics as posited by Asimov: Thou shalt not allow harm to come to a human. The inability is programmed into the brain of the robot and cannot be erased. Robots stop functioning if they are in circumstances not amenable to following the rules. The detective must prove a supposed impossibility has occurred.

But, the aspect of I, Robot that interests me as a civil rights advocate is the status of robots in society. Would it resemble that of people whose rights are limited by custom, if not law?

Scott observes, I believe accurately, that the people who do the most menial work in society are usually regarded with prejudice, if not contempt. She likens the bias against robots in the movie to classism and racism.

Del Spooner, a brooding, wise-cracking homicide detective played with weary action-hero bravado by Will Smith, shows no such sensitivity. He is, in fact, a raging anti-robot bigot, harboring a grudge against the helpful, polite machines that shuffle around the city running errands and doing menial work. Early in the movie, he chases down a robot he mistakenly believes has stolen a woman's purse, only to discover that he has been guilty of technological profiling. He is repeatedly scolded for his prejudice — by his grandmother (Adrian Ricard), by his boss (Chi McBride) and by the sinister head of the top robot-producing corporation (Bruce Greenwood) — which gives the movie an interesting undercurrent of racial irony.