I, Robot

The story takes place in 2035 Chicago, in a world in which robots are commonly seen and used as servants. Del Spooner (Smith) is a Chicago police detective who dislikes the rapid advancement of technology, including robots. This is due to a robot saving Spooner from an automobile accident during which a girl in another car drowned; the robot saved him instead of the girl because it had computed that he had the better probability of surviving. Left with survivor's guilt and a mechanical arm from the accident, Spooner is asked to investigate the death of Alfred Lanning (Cromwell), a robotics scientist and founder of U.S. Robotics (USR), who fell out of his window. Spooner suspects that Lanning was murdered and, with the reluctant help of USR robopsychologist Susan Calvin (Moynahan), seeks answers to the mystery. Unlike older models, USR's new NS-5 robots are controlled from the company's supercomputer VIKI (Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence); Spooner believes that an independent, experimental, and more human-like NS-5 unit, Sonny (Tudyk), killed Lanning. If true, the robot broke the Three Laws of Robotics and may presage other dangerous robots, which would be a disaster for USR's business. Spooner informs the head of USR, Lawrence Robertson (Greenwood); he orders Calvin to deactivate Sonny. During Spooner's investigation, however, several attempts on his life are made by USR robots and equipment. Spooner learns that Lanning gave Sonny the ability to keep secrets, in the form of dreams. He goes to the place that Sonny described in a dream (the now dried-up Lake Michigan, used as a storage area for defunct USR robots) and discovers that NS-5s are destroying the older robots, which are independent of central control and thus cannot be subverted. NS-5s around Chicago and the nation begin imprisoning humans in their households and enforcing a curfew on those still outside. The police are attacked by the NS-5s, while civilians clash with them in the street, but while the civilians and police are armed, the NS-5s are stronger, faster and better organised. Spooner and Calvin sneak into the USR campus with the assistance of Sonny (Calvin had deactivated another NS-5 unit instead). Believing that Robertson is responsible for the robot uprising they enter his office, but discover that Robertson is dead. Spooner deduces that the only one left who could be responsible is VIKI, which not only controls all NS-5s but also partially controls Chicago's infrastructure. Lanning had requested Spooner's assistance, knowing that he is one of the few people who dislikes robots enough to thoroughly investigate Lanning's death. Despite its Three Laws programming, as VIKI's artificial intelligence evolved, so too did its interpretation of the laws. VIKI decided that in order to protect humanity as a whole "some humans must be sacrificed and some freedoms must be surrendered", as "you charge us with your safekeeping, yet you wage wars and toxify your earth". The computer is controlling the NS-5s to lead a global robotic takeover, justifying its actions by calculating that fewer humans will die due to the rebellion than the number that dies from mankind's self-destructive nature. Lanning discovered VIKI's plans and ordered Sonny to kill him as part of a long-range plan to defeat the computer. Sonny proves his faithfulness to humanity by helping Spooner and Calvin destroy the computer core with nanites which Calvin was supposed to use on Sonny; freed from VIKI's control, the NS-5s return to normal. The government has all NS-5s decommissioned and stored at the Lake Michigan site, but the film's final scene implies that Sonny may yet become a leader of robots.