Comment Re:Has he read the books? (Score 2) 65
You need to read those stories again. The DIDN'T take over running society. There is, however, a backstory where they wiped out all non-human life in the galaxy to make it safe for people. (I don't think that was really in his mind while he was writing most of the stories, but he added it towards the end when he was trying to merge his story universes into one.)
If you read "Robots and Empire" the robots aren't really running the Empire, just trying to subtly guide it. The last book in the cycle does end up with an indication that the Robots are going to take over, but that's never really explored.
OTOH, if you were to take the English language version of the first law seriously, it would have the effect you postulate. But the English language version is supposed to be only a very rough translation of the actual mathematics behind the robot brains. (He didn't phrase that as "programming", but that's probably about what he meant.) If you try to translate a program into English, you're going to get something quite a bit different from the actual program. Especially if it's a complex program and you translate it into 3 short pithy sentences. Note that in different stories the robots are built with different limitations, but they always summarize it with the same 3 laws. Consider how in "Little Lost Robot" one of the laws is weakened.
That said, remember that these stories were fiction, designed to be an entertaining exploration of the problem space.