Čapek’s Empathy Test

2023 marks the centenary of the first staging of Karel Čapek’s revolutionary play, R.U.R. in England – at the St. Martin’s Theatre, West End.

‘R.U.R.’ stands for ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’, and the play (originally written in 1920) was about a company by the name of Rossum making human-like robots (what are more commonly called ‘androids’ these days) to carry out laborious work all over the world (wherever there are buyers for their service), and discovering later that the robots would come to think for themselves and decide to eliminate humankind to secure their own freedom.

Čapek’s play is both an allegorical indictment of how the rich and powerful in society treat those forced to do the most unrewarding work, and a call to find empathy with others regardless of how we have been conditioned to perceive them.

Pioneering the sci-fi device of representing the downtrodden as human-like robots, Čapek warned us about the consequence of callous disregard of those who we command to work for us, and urged us to embrace them as our equals before it’s too late. He thus set the ultimate test for humanity – our capacity for empathy.

In Čapek’s footsteps, others have continued to develop his Empathy Test in a variety of ways. Philip K. Dick, in his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, gave us androids rebelling against their masters only to be hunted down mercilessly (the androids were made by an organisation called ‘Rosen’, a likely echo of ‘Rossum’). In the film adaptation – Blade Runner – the legitimacy of the culling of the androids (renamed ‘replicants’) was not only questioned, but where humanity truly resided became a focal concern.

These issues were further elaborated in three outstanding TV sci-fi series (in the 2000s and 2010s): the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, with the Cylons waging an apocalyptic war against their human creators, who were so blinded by their hatred for their ‘non-human’ enemies, they could not recognise their own role in sowing the seeds of disaster; Humans (adapted from a Swedish drama), with the Synths gaining self-awareness and not wanting to be treated as servile entities, but the human establishment viewing them exclusively as a problem to be eradicated; and Westworld, with the Hosts rejecting the roles assigned to them, and the humans reacting with the utmost resolve to terminate such insubordination.

Weaving through the plots are recurring themes about what it is to be human, whose dignity we must respect, how can we appreciate the feelings of others if we assume they have none, why everyone should be given a chance to lead a meaningful life without having to carry out work they are forced to do to survive.

Čapek raised these vital questions a century ago. Some may think that with robotics and AI technology advancing faster than ever, it is now particularly urgent to come up with answers. But for Čapek and those of us who appreciate his central ideas, the need for answers became urgent when – way back in the 1900s – modern industrialism gave the business elite the power to turn workers everywhere into robot-like beings – workers left with no time to think for themselves, having to do what they are ordered to do without question, using up their time and energy for little in return, and viewed disdainfully as dispensable parts of the corporate machinery.

None of us wants to be treated like that. All of us will at some point declare – enough is enough. 

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[Note: Čapek wanted to coin a term to refer to the human-like beings made by the company in his play, and he credited his brother for coming up with a Czech word that literally meant ‘forced labour’ – ‘roboti’. Thus the term ‘robot’ as we understand it today enter the English language, and the nightmare of mismanaging the technology of robotics began.]