Biff Tannen, up to his old tricks...

[Dreamstalker]

You're reminding me of the hitchhiking robot from several years ago that made it more or less across Canada and almost immediately got smashed to pieces by the folks who picked it up once it was in the US.

Hitchbot! I was waiting and waiting for it to make it to Boston...poor thing

[Argabarga]

Oh, that was just the store ghost.

You're reminding me of the hitchhiking robot from several years ago that made it more or less across Canada and almost immediately got smashed to pieces by the folks who picked it up once it was in the US.

I think it was Philly that did him in, which to be fair, anyone could've seen coming.

It's city of BROTHERLY love, not ROBOTIC.

[SpyOne]

The first law is: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

In I, Robot the main computer, VIKI, deems certain human activities, such as eating the wrong food, as harmful to humans and thus acts to prevent that harm. Many daily activities can harm a human and VIKI was acting to prevent the harm from those activities. I think this was in the spirit of Asimov's robot stories. VIKI was applying the laws in ways not envisioned by the programmers.

The thing is, in the books robots couldn't choose the lesser of two evils. If you were about to step in front of a bus and the only way to stop you would be to grab your arm hard enough to break it, the robot next to you would destroy itself trying to find a different plan.

In one of the books the main character realizes that he nearly destroyed a robot accidentally when it had been sent to retrieve him by ordering it to go back and say he'd be along in a few minutes: contradictory orders were going to melt it's brain.

Certain very sophisticated robots could make certain judgement calls, like maybe save your life by breaking your arm before melting its brain, but the one feature that robots in the film had that none in the books ever had was the ability to substitute another robot's judgement for their own.
VIKI can see as big a picture as you like, her minions will still refuse to harm people.

My go-to example of the three laws not always meaning that robots are Good: if a robot knows the identity of a murderer (and somehow is sure it couldn't have prevented that so hasn't melted its brain), it CAN'T tell you. Because you will put the killer in prison. Which is harm.

[EricKei]

Tangentially related:
"Good men don't need rules; today is not the day to find out why I have so many." - The Doctor