Dr. Alfred Lanning is a fictional character from the books and movie of I, Robot. In the movie he is played by James Cromwell. Lanning is the Director of Research at U.S. Robots, the creator of modern robots and inventor of the Three Laws of Robotics. In the stories he played a prominent role. In the movie, Alfred Lanning is only featured in the early stages of the movie and dies early on as he seemingly commits suicide. However Detective Del Spooner smells foul play, which sets the scene of the rest of the movie. It is later revealed that he ordered his own robot Sonny to kill him, after giving Sonny secondary programming that allowed the robot to ignore the Second Law. I, Robot is a collection of nine science fiction short stories by Isaac Asimov, first published by Gnome Press in 1950. ... James Cromwell (born January 27, 1940) is an American television and film actor. ... This cover of I, Robot illustrates the story Runaround, the first to list all Three Laws of Robotics. ...