Why haven’t our fears of robots changed in a hundred years?

The idea of robots was dreamt up a century ago, and yet in all that time our fears of them have not changed. Michael Szollosy explains why that is

A robot used to assist Covid-19 patients in New Delhi (Getty)

This is a story you will have heard before.

A genius but completely mad scientist – with the backing of a ruthlessly greedy corporation – creates a sentient robot. The scientist’s intentions for the robot are noble: to help us work, to save us from mundane tasks, to serve its human masters.

But the scientist is over-confident, and blind to the dangers of his new invention. Those that prophesied such warnings are dismissed as luddites, or hopeless romantics not in step with the modern world. But the threat is real: the intelligent, artificial being is not content being a compliant slave.