The Intuitive Atomic Robot

When I was reading Robots and Empire last month, it raised a question in my mind. Daneel repeatedly refers to the fact that as a robot, he lacks the intuition that Elijah Baley has, and therefore can't make the leap to a conclusion without more evidence.

So then I wondered: Does Atomic Robo have intuition?

I suppose you could raise the question about any fictional artificial lifeform character, but Robo was the one that raised the question with me.

I was going to say Deadly Art of Science is a strong point against him, since he couldn't piece together how all the various thefts by gangsters and one large robot (with a fondness for derby hats) fit. On the other hand, he was able to figure out the thieves were escaping using an abandoned pneumatic tube system because the locations they robbed matched a map he remembered from Mr. Tesla's office. And he did grasp that the various robberies, including the crystal skull, were connected.

He pulled together a theory on how Dr. Dinosaur is not actually a time-traveling dinosaur, and actually the result of an illegal genetic experiment, just based on talking with him and his opinion that time travel is either impossible or at least extremely unlikely. Of course, that's hampered somewhat by the fact Dr. Dinosaur did successfully, if unintentionally, throw Robo backwards in time, so he might be wrong.

But that's good! Part of intuition is making leaps that aren't always correct, right?

But when Edison came back as a ghost, Robo couldn't figure out who it was until the ghost mentioned Theodore (his son), the day of the big battle, and the Odic Force. At that point, you can't really call it intuition. I'm not even sure how to rate his battle with the Shadow from Beyond Time, considering he was able to collaborate with three of himself from different points in his life, who could tell his youngest self what he needed to learn how to do. That said, his future selves didn't have time to tell him much other than to study transdimensional math and that he would need to invent some fields of science himself. The rest was up to him to piece together, and he got better at it, up to a point.

One issue is, Robo seems extremely firm about what is and isn't scientifically possible for a guy who has seen the amount of weird crap he has. You'd think he'd be more open to exotic answers, but I guess if he doesn't see a way to test or confirm them, they aren't much good.

Maybe that highlights the difficulty here. Robo isn't your typical private detective, he's a scientist who also sometimes solves problems with punching (and shooting, and jumping). He's not solving murders where he has to figure out where the murder weapon went, he's dealing with threats that sometimes involve aspects of science he either isn't aware of or doesn't understand. If you don't know what the rules are, it can be difficult to make that leap, because you don't know what can be ruled out, or what is reasonable.

Even Elijah Baley, for all Daneel praises his intellect, struggles during the cases in The Naked Sun and Robots of Dawn because there are things about Solaria and Aurora, about Spacers and their culture in general, that he doesn't understand. And those gaps, the things that are so accepted on those worlds no one even thinks to mention them to Baley, help trip him up. Once he learns about them, it helps him to understand the psychology of the people he's dealing with, and the intuition can kick in.

For Robo, when people were either mysteriously turning into machines, or turned out to be machines all along, he recognized a sound they emitted before falling apart as something connected to ALAN, and went to Hashima. Of course, it turned out the robots were Helsingard's creations, because ALAN had unknowingly hacked into them, but the initial leap was good.

So is that intuition, or just experience? Is there a difference? You gain experience by doing things, and if you gain intuition through experience, then. . .