Is Will Smith's I, Robot (2004) Right About Humanoid Robots in 2035?

Are humanoid robots in 2035 more fiction than science? I, Robot (2004) says "no."

The Will Smith 2004 blockbuster I, Robot predicts pervasive humanoid robots in 2035; investors agree, roboticists disagree as I describe in my Science Robotics article, which you can get here behind the paywall.

Here's the cheeky summary by Grok of the much more sedate, well reasoned, and loaded with citations article in Science Robotics :

Will Smith’s 2004 I, Robot cheerfully predicted that by 2035 we’d all be sharing sidewalks with sleek, Apple-product-looking Nestors walking dogs, babysitting, tossing garbage, and substituting for entire professions with one interchangeable model—investors apparently watched the same movie and decided $39 billion for Figure and $2.5 billion for Digit was a bargain. Reality, meanwhile, is still arguing over whether a wheeled hospital helper with a head counts as “humanoid,” while the actual machines remain sensor-starved, data-hungry, and frequently puppeted by a human in another room because autonomy keeps tripping over dropped parts and unmodeled chaos. At IROS 2025, three thousand roboticists voted 80–20 that humanoids won’t replace most workers even by 2050, then left even more convinced (90%) after the debate; so Hollywood’s timeline looks less like a forecast and more like an expensive group hallucination that the people actually building the robots refuse to join.

The movie may not be accurate about humanoids. It is definitely not an accurate interpretation of Asimov's I, Robot stories-- the studio patched in Asimov's characters over a script that had nothing to do with the series. For example, Dr. Susan Calvin is a bit cold but also beautiful and a bit of a romantic interest for Will Smith. Sure. On the plus side, Alan Tudyk voices Sonny, the nice robot.

When it came out, a local movie theater offered my lab free tickets to the preview showing. About 8 of my students showed up and the theater had reserved the second row of seats for us. The front row was for reviewers, most of whom looked like a cross between Roger Ebert and the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. The reviewers all turned to look at us, smiling. One asked, "are you roboticists?" with a tinge of awe. Embarrassed, I said, "Yes, from the University of South Florida." They then turned back to their popcorn and we could catch snippets of "they are REAL roboticists. I wonder what they will think of the movie." Gah. We were going to get asked what we thought- and the previews had warned me the movie was not Asimov and the humanoids were unrealistic. I was still trying to think of a polite but truthful answer when the movie ended. Sure enough one of the reviewers turned and asked "What did you think of the movie?" I paused, still desperately trying to craft an acceptable response. My grad student, Aaron Gage, came to the rescue, "Not as bad as we had feared!" he said cheerfully. The conversational dam broken, I added, "I love Will Smith." The reviewers were delighted with our "praise" as it was clear they enjoyed the movie and interpreted our responses as that we enjoyed it too. I mean, it's not a bad movie, but there was a lot of handwaving and inconsistencies so for hard core scifi fans it was OK.