BROOKE GLADSTONE:  From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. Bob Garfield is away this week. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And this week we ponder the current state of artificial intelligence and its potential to, you know, elevate or annihilate humanity. Why has Google gobbled up the greatest minds in the field of robotics? Why does the Army use smart bot recruiters? Why are we leery of thinking machines, but leap at the chance to snooze in the backseat while our cars drive themselves? It’s a surprisingly old question, though the ancients seemed less conflicted. Take 11th century China where mechanical humanoids shined the hours on an astronomical clock. Ever after and across the world, we craft automata to play music, write letters and, lately, even plumb our souls.

The first use of the word “robot,” derived from the Slavic word for work, dates from 1920, a play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. It’s called “Rossum's Universal Robots” or RUR. And it doesn’t end well, for us. Here’s a scene from Yuri Rasovsky’s radio play.

  [CLIP]:

ALQUIST:  It was a crime to make robots.

HARRY DOMIN:  No, Alquist, I don’t regret that even today.

ALQUIST:  Not even today?

HARRY DOMIN:  Not even today - the last day of civilization. Was it a crime to shatter the servitude of labor, the dreadful and humiliating labor that man had to undergo? Work was too hard. Life was too hard. And to overcome that -

ALQUIST:  Was not what the two Rossums had in mind?

HARRY DOMIN:  It’s what I had in mind.

ALQUIST:  How well you succeeded! How well we all succeeded. For profit, for progress, we have destroyed mankind.

  [END CLIP]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  That mortal conflict has since played out countless times, in novels and on screens large and small. I mean, it’s not always a conflict, but usually. Jay P. Telotte, the author of Replications:  A Robotic History of the Science Fiction Film, says that this template of ambivalence was set with the film Forbidden Planet, specifically in the introduction of Robby the Robot in 1956, a crucial year for smart machines.

JAY P. TELOTTE:  Robby, in fact, from the start of that film, is always presented as a figure that might or might not be under total control.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Robby was a seven-foot servant and protector, with a vacuum tube for a head, a washing machine tub for a body and articulated arms and legs. Humans land on Robby's world which is devastated by technology. They decide to demolish the planet, but they can’t leave without Robby's technological know-how, so they take him along. Tricky. He saves them. He could destroy humanity. But he doesn't.

  [SOUND EFFECTS/UP & UNDER]

In fact, he has a great TV career, appearing on Hazel, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Addams Family, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and, in his signature role –

  [CLIP]:

ROBBY THE ROBOT:  Danger, Will Robinson, danger!

  [END CLIP]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  - on Lost in Space. Robby was both iconic and a bit of an anomaly because Jay P. Telotte sees a trajectory in our view of robots, from prewar fondness to postwar dread. The bomb drove home our suicidal inventiveness, and the internet, the intrusive power of great inexplicable forces in our lives. Now, robots no longer looked like Maytags.

 [ROBOTIC VOICE, UP & UNDER]

They looked like us, as in the 1973 movie, Westworld.

 [CLIP]:

FLIGHT ATTENDANT:  We will soon be landing at the ultimate resort, where you can live out your every fantasy. Each resort is maintained by reliable computer technology and peopled by lifelike robot men and women. Desire ends in satisfaction, and all in a controlled environment.

  [END CLIP]

JAY P. TELOTTE:  Except when that notion of control goes a bit haywire and Yule Brenner, for example, in Westworld, starts killing the other guests.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Culturally, we’ve always been in a bit of a muddle. We love them, but do they love us back? Here’s an early scene from the reboot of Battlestar Galactica.

  [CLIP]:

SIX:  Deep down you've always known there was something different about me. That flatters your ego, to believe that alone among all the billions of people of the Twelve Colonies, you were chosen for my mission. 

BALTAR:  Your mission? What mission?

SIX:  You knew I wanted access to the defense mainframe.

  [MUSIC UP & UNDER]

BALTAR:  What exactly are you saying?

SIX:  Humanity's children are returning home, today.

  [MUSIC/SOUND EFFECTS][END CLIP]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  They seduce us every bit as much as they scare us. We yearn, not just for the leisure they promise but the immortality they represent. Is that why we build them?

JAY P. TELOTTE:  Yeah, it, it may be the natural question:  Why is natural reproduction not good enough for us? Well, that’s because we are not good enough for us, right? We, we die. We can’t help but wonder if there’s some possible way of, of postponing it, you know, just much like the replicants do in the movie Bladerunner. We want more life.

  [CLIP]:

 [MUSIC UP & UNDER]

ROY:  I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.

 [END CLIP]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  More than zombies, werewolves, more even than vampires, robots, in their infinite variety, reflect all our greatest hopes and our greatest fears. And, unlike those mythical creatures, robots exist, but not how we imagine. And they also pose a potential threat, but also not how we imagine.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. Bob Garfield is away this week. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And this week we ponder the current state of artificial intelligence and its potential to, you know, elevate or annihilate humanity. Why has Google gobbled up the greatest minds in the field of robotics? Why does the Army use smart bot recruiters? Why are we leery of thinking machines, but leap at the chance to snooze in the backseat while our cars drive themselves? It’s a surprisingly old question, though the ancients seemed less conflicted. Take 11th century China where mechanical humanoids shined the hours on an astronomical clock. Ever after and across the world, we craft automata to play music, write letters and, lately, even plumb our souls.

The first use of the word “robot,” derived from the Slavic word for work, dates from 1920, a play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. It’s called “Rossum's Universal Robots” or RUR. And it doesn’t end well, for us. Here’s a scene from Yuri Rasovsky’s radio play.

  [CLIP]:

ALQUIST:  It was a crime to make robots.

HARRY DOMIN:  No, Alquist, I don’t regret that even today.

ALQUIST:  Not even today?

HARRY DOMIN:  Not even today - the last day of civilization. Was it a crime to shatter the servitude of labor, the dreadful and humiliating labor that man had to undergo? Work was too hard. Life was too hard. And to overcome that -

ALQUIST:  Was not what the two Rossums had in mind?

HARRY DOMIN:  It’s what I had in mind.

ALQUIST:  How well you succeeded! How well we all succeeded. For profit, for progress, we have destroyed mankind.

  [END CLIP]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  That mortal conflict has since played out countless times, in novels and on screens large and small. I mean, it’s not always a conflict, but usually. Jay P. Telotte, the author of Replications:  A Robotic History of the Science Fiction Film, says that this template of ambivalence was set with the film Forbidden Planet, specifically in the introduction of Robby the Robot in 1956, a crucial year for smart machines.

JAY P. TELOTTE:  Robby, in fact, from the start of that film, is always presented as a figure that might or might not be under total control.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Robby was a seven-foot servant and protector, with a vacuum tube for a head, a washing machine tub for a body and articulated arms and legs. Humans land on Robby's world which is devastated by technology. They decide to demolish the planet, but they can’t leave without Robby's technological know-how, so they take him along. Tricky. He saves them. He could destroy humanity. But he doesn't.

  [SOUND EFFECTS/UP & UNDER]

In fact, he has a great TV career, appearing on Hazel, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Addams Family, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and, in his signature role –

  [CLIP]:

ROBBY THE ROBOT:  Danger, Will Robinson, danger!

  [END CLIP]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  - on Lost in Space. Robby was both iconic and a bit of an anomaly because Jay P. Telotte sees a trajectory in our view of robots, from prewar fondness to postwar dread. The bomb drove home our suicidal inventiveness, and the internet, the intrusive power of great inexplicable forces in our lives. Now, robots no longer looked like Maytags.

 [ROBOTIC VOICE, UP & UNDER]

They looked like us, as in the 1973 movie, Westworld.

 [CLIP]:

FLIGHT ATTENDANT:  We will soon be landing at the ultimate resort, where you can live out your every fantasy. Each resort is maintained by reliable computer technology and peopled by lifelike robot men and women. Desire ends in satisfaction, and all in a controlled environment.

  [END CLIP]

JAY P. TELOTTE:  Except when that notion of control goes a bit haywire and Yule Brenner, for example, in Westworld, starts killing the other guests.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  Culturally, we’ve always been in a bit of a muddle. We love them, but do they love us back? Here’s an early scene from the reboot of Battlestar Galactica.

  [CLIP]:

SIX:  Deep down you've always known there was something different about me. That flatters your ego, to believe that alone among all the billions of people of the Twelve Colonies, you were chosen for my mission. 

BALTAR:  Your mission? What mission?

SIX:  You knew I wanted access to the defense mainframe.

  [MUSIC UP & UNDER]

BALTAR:  What exactly are you saying?

SIX:  Humanity's children are returning home, today.

  [MUSIC/SOUND EFFECTS][END CLIP]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  They seduce us every bit as much as they scare us. We yearn, not just for the leisure they promise but the immortality they represent. Is that why we build them?

JAY P. TELOTTE:  Yeah, it, it may be the natural question:  Why is natural reproduction not good enough for us? Well, that’s because we are not good enough for us, right? We, we die. We can’t help but wonder if there’s some possible way of, of postponing it, you know, just much like the replicants do in the movie Bladerunner. We want more life.

  [CLIP]:

 [MUSIC UP & UNDER]

ROY:  I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.

 [END CLIP]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:  More than zombies, werewolves, more even than vampires, robots, in their infinite variety, reflect all our greatest hopes and our greatest fears. And, unlike those mythical creatures, robots exist, but not how we imagine. And they also pose a potential threat, but also not how we imagine.