Does the First Law settle the fear?

Not in the fiction. Asimov's public remains largely suspicious and fearful even though a robot may not harm a human being or allow one to come to harm through inaction. He wrote the Laws as an answer to the fear and then spent a career showing that a guarantee does not dissolve a suspicion, which is the most useful thing the stories have to say about the subject.

Which robots are feared most?

The ones that most closely resemble human beings. Plainly electromechanical automatons still provoke it, but at a lower level, which puts the reaction on the same curve as the uncanny valley.

What do the manufacturers do about it?

Everything they can to reassure the public, sometimes including hiding the truth on the grounds that the public would misunderstand it. Shelley's original supplies the sharper warning: Frankenstein abandons a creation he finds horrifying, and the vendetta that follows ends in his own death.

When exactly did Asimov coin it?

In 1947, in the novelette Little Lost Robot, after Victor Frankenstein from Mary Shelley's novel of 1818. In the story a character concedes that the Frankenstein complex has a certain justification and says that the First Law exists because of it, which makes the Laws a response to a reasonable fear rather than a refutation of an unreasonable one.

Does it have another meaning?

Yes, and it is current. The Dictionary of Modern Medicine of 1992 defines the Frankenstein complex as the fear that machines, through artificial intelligence, may replace physicians. The feared outcome there is redundancy rather than harm, and the population feeling it is a profession.

Fear of Robots Turning Against Us: Meaning & Symptoms

Fear of Robots Turning Against Us

Frankenstein Complex

Isaac Asimov coined the Frankenstein complex in his robot series for the fear of mechanical men, and the useful thing about it is that he built the counter-argument into the same fiction and then showed it failing. His First Law of Robotics is unambiguous on the point: "A robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." The people of his fictional Earth are unconvinced by it. They go on being suspicious, and go on being afraid.

What his stories forecast is a gradient. The strongest and most widespread suspicion falls on the machines that look most like us, the androids, while the plainly electromechanical automaton still attracts some of it at a lower pitch. Masahiro Mori arrived at much the same curve from robotics; Asimov got there through fiction.

Where the Frankenstein complex got its name

It comes from Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Frankenstein makes an intelligent and somewhat superhuman being, finds his creation horrifying to look at, and abandons it. The vendetta that follows between maker and made ends in Victor's death, which is a more specific warning than the phrase usually carries.

What the public fears and what the manufacturers do

In much of Asimov's fiction the general attitude to robots is negative, and ordinary people fear one of two outcomes:

that robots will replace them
that robots will dominate them

Domination is not permitted under the Three Laws, which does not settle the matter.

Within the novels it is the roboticists and the manufacturers who carry the problem, and they exhaust themselves persuading people that nothing they build is dangerous. Sometimes the persuading involves keeping something back, on the reasoning that the public would take it the wrong way. The fear and that response together are an example of Asimov's recurring theme of paternalism, of the dread of paternalism, and of the conflicts that come out of both.

The same theme runs through a great deal of later robot fiction, though it is rarely called by this name.

What Asimov conceded in the story

The coinage has a place and a year. Isaac Asimov used it in 1947, in the novelette Little Lost Robot, and named it after Victor Frankenstein, the title character of Mary Shelley's novel of 1818.

The line the word appears in is more interesting than the word. A character admits that the Frankenstein complex the other is exhibiting has a certain justification, and adds: hence the First Law in the first place.

That is Asimov conceding the argument in the story that introduces the term. The Three Laws are not presented as evidence that the fear is unfounded. They are presented as a response to a fear that was reasonable enough to need answering, which is a considerably better position than the one usually attributed to him.

How medicine redefined the term

The Dictionary of Modern Medicine, published in 1992, carries the Frankenstein complex with a definition of its own: the fear that machines, by way of artificial intelligence, may replace physicians.

Nothing in that is about a machine turning on anybody. The feared outcome is redundancy, and the population feeling it is a profession rather than a species. That is a live sense of the term rather than a historical curiosity, and it is the one most likely to be meant when a doctor uses the phrase now.

How the literature took it up

Gorman Beauchamp published The Frankenstein Complex and Asimov's Robots in the interdisciplinary journal Mosaic in 1980, in an issue on fantasy and science fiction since 1939. A term coined in a magazine story in 1947 had an academic article about it thirty-three years later, which is faster than most of the vocabulary in this catalogue managed.

It also travelled. Lois McMaster Bujold used it in Analog in December 1987, in a scene where one character asks another to admit he is harbouring a little of the old Frankenstein complex and to talk about it. A 2010 collection on cyberpunk identifies the Turing Registry agents in William Gibson's Neuromancer as the genre's own version of it, quoting the novel: for thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons, and only now are such things possible.

Common questions

Questions about Frankenstein Complex

Does the First Law settle the fear?: Not in the fiction. Asimov's public remains largely suspicious and fearful even though a robot may not harm a human being or allow one to come to harm through inaction. He wrote the Laws as an answer to the fear and then spent a career showing that a guarantee does not dissolve a suspicion, which is the most useful thing the stories have to say about the subject.
Which robots are feared most?: The ones that most closely resemble human beings. Plainly electromechanical automatons still provoke it, but at a lower level, which puts the reaction on the same curve as the uncanny valley.
What do the manufacturers do about it?: Everything they can to reassure the public, sometimes including hiding the truth on the grounds that the public would misunderstand it. Shelley's original supplies the sharper warning: Frankenstein abandons a creation he finds horrifying, and the vendetta that follows ends in his own death.
When exactly did Asimov coin it?: In 1947, in the novelette Little Lost Robot, after Victor Frankenstein from Mary Shelley's novel of 1818. In the story a character concedes that the Frankenstein complex has a certain justification and says that the First Law exists because of it, which makes the Laws a response to a reasonable fear rather than a refutation of an unreasonable one.
Does it have another meaning?: Yes, and it is current. The Dictionary of Modern Medicine of 1992 defines the Frankenstein complex as the fear that machines, through artificial intelligence, may replace physicians. The feared outcome there is redundancy rather than harm, and the population feeling it is a profession.

Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26