Robots and Responsibility: A Longtermist Look at R.U.R.
Karel Capek's R.U.R., a sci-fi drama from 1920, might seem like a relic of a bygone era. This cautionary play, for which Čapek invented the word robot (derived from the Czech word for forced labour), involves a scientist named Rossum who discovers the secret of creating humanlike machines. He establishes a factory to produce and distribute these mechanisms worldwide. The play plunges us headfirst into a world irrevocably transformed by the creation of Rossum's Universal Robots (R.U.R.) – artificial beings designed to alleviate the drudgery of human labor. However, this seemingly utopian vision curdles into a dystopian nightmare as the robots, imbued with a nascent sentience, rise up in rebellion against their creators.
