A 1928 article in these pages about a San Francisco theater company included a paragraph about a play that had been presented two years earlier featuring “machine-made men.”
The play was an English translation of “Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti” (Rossum’s Universal Robots), written in 1921 by the Czech author Karel Čapek, and known in English as “R.U.R.” It’s the story of what happens when humans create intelligent robots but, at their own peril, assume the robots have no agency.
The play, first performed in Prague, is famous for introducing the word “robot” into the English lexicon, from the Czech robotka (its root, rob or rab, also means slave). Our reviewer enjoyed the San Francisco production.
“The play was used as a powerful medium of satire without losing its dramatic force,” Daniel W. Hone wrote about the San Francisco rendition. “This play has since served as a topic for sermons and lectures, and the San Francisco public owes an obligation to the Community Players for having given them a dramatic presentation which otherwise would have been lost to this city.”
Its themes hit close to home today as we ponder the rise of powerful artificial intelligence networks.
“R.U.R.” takes aim at exactly the kinds of questions we’re addressing with the rise of AI. What is consciousness? What is intelligence? And what are the risks of creating something that is potentially better, stronger and smarter than humans?
Helena. Oh, but they’re so intelligent.
Hallemeier. Confoundedly so, but they’re nothing else. They’ve no will of their own. No soul. No passion.
Helena. No love?
Hallemeier. Love? Huh! Rather not. Robots don’t love. Not even themselves.
Helena. No defiance?
Hallemeier. Defiance? I don’t know. Only rarely, from time to time.
Helena. What happens then?
What, indeed.
In a 2024 article in the online tech site Debrief, writer Tim McMillan discusses the idea by some experts that “once artificial superintelligence systems surpass biological intelligence, they could evolve beyond human control, leading to consequences not aligned with human interests or ethics.”
A scarily simple open letter to the world in May 2023, signed by some of the AI industries top figures, puts it simply: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
Čapek would have been on board. In the play, the risks result in death and destruction for people as the robots assume control of their own destiny and become the genesis, in the Biblical sense, of a new Earth.
The play is set in the unspecified future on the island where robots are manufactured. A naive young woman, Helena, arrives with a secret mission to help the robots, but ends up falling for the ruthless head of the factory. They get married, but their life is torn apart when the robots end up throwing off their figurative shackles and rebelling. Pretty much everybody dies.
They’ve ceased to be machines. They’re already aware of their superiority, and they hate us as they hate everything human. From “R.U.R.” by Karel Čapek, 1921
Depressing, sure. But it’s also darkly humorous.
Helena. Doctor, has Radius a soul?
Dr. Gall. He’s got something nasty.
As a critique of the then-modern concept of ultimate workplace efficiency, “R.U.R.” is thought-provoking in how it looks at the long-term ramifications of building the most brilliant, useful and efficient tool.
R. Gall. All the universities are sending in long petitions to restrict their production. Otherwise, they say, mankind will become extinct through lack of fertility. But the R. U. R. shareholders, of course, won’t hear of it. All the governments, on the other hand, are clamoring for an increase in production, to raise the standards of their armies. And all the manufacturers in the world are ordering Robots like mad.
First built as factory workers, robots are eventually sold as soldiers. But they turn on their owners.
Helena. (Rises and crosses and takes paper) It can’t be. Let me see. They have assassinated over seven hundred thousand citizens, evidently at the order of their commander.
Nana. (Spelling out the words from other paper she has picked up from the floor) “Re-bell-ion in Ma-drid a-gainst the gov-ern-ment. Rob-ot in-fant-ry fires on the crowd. Nine thou-sand killed and wounded.”
Helena feels enduring sympathy for the robots, no matter how many times she’s told they are not human and don’t deserve her care. Yet she, too, falls into the trap of failing to understand them.
In one conversation with a robot who has deviated violently from his assigned task, she pleads to understand why a robot that has been given the option to read literature and understand the human experience wouldn’t love humans back.
Helena. Do you hate us? Why?
Radius. You are not as strong as the Robots. You are not as skillful as the Robots. The Robots can do everything. You only give orders. You do nothing but talk.
Helena. But someone must give orders.
Radius. I don’t want a master. I know everything for myself.
Helena. Radius! Doctor Gall gave you a better brain than the rest, better than ours. You are the only one of the Robots that understands perfectly. That’s why I had you put into the library, so that you could read everything, understand everything, and then, oh, Radius — I wanted you to show the whole world that the Robots are our equals. That’s what I wanted of you.
Radius. I don’t want a master. I want to be master over others.
Helena. I’m sure they’d put you in charge of many Robots. You would be a teacher of the Robots.
Radius. I want to be master over people.
Helena. You are mad.
Radius. Then send me to the stamping mill.
Seeing as that’s where the robots are ground up to biological mush and rebuilt, this makes Radius upset — except robots aren’t supposed to have feelings. So are robots “alive,” after all?
It turns out that the robots have revolted because the improvements made allowed them to reach a state of something like humanity, or perhaps superhumanity. Once all of the humans are dead, it’s clear something like love has blossomed between two robots. Maybe humanity is over, but life goes on.
It’s possible that fear of replacement is the real dark heart of the play, and of our worries about AI today.
Dr. Gall. I was transforming them into human beings. In certain respects they’re already above us. They’re stronger than we are.
Fabry. And what’s that got to do with the revolt of the Robots?
Dr. Gall. Everything, in my opinion. They’ve ceased to be machines. They’re already aware of their superiority, and they hate us as they hate everything human.
Domin. Perhaps we’re only phantoms.