The word “robot” entered the world in a play. The Czech writer Karel Capek wrote “R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)” in 1920; it premiered in Prague on 25 January 1921. Capek built the word from the Czech “robota,” meaning forced labor or drudgery, and credited his brother Josef with suggesting it. In the play the robots are not metal machines but artificial workers made of synthetic living matter, mass-produced to do humanity’s labor before they rise up and wipe out nearly the whole human race.