RUR by Karel Capek

 RUR by Karel Capek


The first work to mention robots- 8 out of 10

 

-          Will the robots rule the world

-          Do they have rights

-          Would they revolt

These are some of the questions posed by this interesting, if at times naïve work by a rather unknown author.

R.U.R. stands for Rossum’s Universal Robots and the reason why I thought this a bit rudimentary in parts is its age.

It was written in 1920 and introduced the term robots to the English language and science fiction – roboti…

The robots in this play are exact replicas of humans- they resemble them so much that the heroine mistakes the ones for the others.

Helena Glory, daughter of the president is at the center of the plot, at least for an important part of the story.

She comes to the island where the robots are made with the intention to create a rebellion of the artificial creations.

She is taken aback by the way the first robot she sees looks like and does not believe the general manager.

On the second step, she is taken in by the gathering of various executives, whom she takes for robots.

There are some dated ideas about the future of robots, but some issues are still valid today, when it is clear that the future will see plenty of them.

In the play, the advanced robots use…typewriters

This made me understand that this is really, really old, even if science fiction.

In the past weeks I have been reading another book that explores the future, from a very sober perspective- Singularity

-          The technological singularity is the hypothesis that accelerating progress in technologies will cause a runaway effect wherein artificial intelligence will exceed human intellectual capacity and control, thus radically changing civilization in an event called "the singularity".[1] Because the capabilities of such intelligence may be impossible for a human to comprehend, the technological singularity is an occurrence beyond which events may become unpredictable, unfavorable, or even unfathomable.

In other words, robots will be around for the foreseeable future, but they will not control humans, the earth or anything.

Artificial intelligence will pass humans by and I believe that it will become more intelligent than man quite soon.

Ray Kurzweil is right when he envisages a world where artificial intelligence will be able to produce more and better artificial intelligence.

The exponential growth experienced in the past few decades by the information technology sector is proof that artificial intelligence will dominate.

Man’s supremacy may indeed come to an end soon.

It may be the reason why he is here.

As for R.U.R. – it has a very poignant parallel- man as god and two robots as Adam and Eve respectively, ready to procreate and establish a robot race.

Kurzweil has got it right, but then Capek wrote about 100 years ago, not knowing anything about the technological boom that we have been experiencing over the past 50 years.

 

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