Neither case describes Asimov's robots, which are clearly sapient, but also based on genuine understanding of how they work. They're not existing beings "cruelly brainwashed" into obeying the Laws, the Laws are built into their being. Or as is sometimes said in the stories, the verbal laws are an approximation of the mathematics of standard positronic brains -- they're Laws as in the law of gravity, not the Ten Commandments. Robots want to protect and obey humans in the same way that humans like sugar and kittens and want to avoid shit and boredom.

John Sladek wrote _Tik-tok_, on the premise that robots actually were "free-willed" beings with asimov circuits constraining their actual behavior; the eponymous robot had faulty circuits. But this is pretty alien to Asimov's actual concept, in the same way that popular "Dyson spheres" aren't what Dyson actually described (lifted from Olaf Stapledon.)