In October 1922, almost exactly 100 years ago, Karel Capek’s R.U.R. was performed for the first time in New York City. The play was set on a small island, on which a vast manufacturing complex produced millions of humanoid robots. The play is famous for originating the word ‘robot’: it comes from the Czech ‘robota’, meaning forced labour.
R.U.R. was released just after World War I, in a climate of increasing industrialisation and automation. Fordism was taking hold as a dominant industrial and economic doctrine, and focus increasingly shifted towards optimising the productivity of workers. R.U.R. presented a world dominated by humanoid robots, with disastrous consequences. People stop reproducing, since humans are no longer needed to work, and wealth and power is increasingly centralised in governments and industrialists. Humanoid robots create a dystopia - and that’s before they ultimately rise up and kill humanity.
R.U.R. is one of those works of early science fiction that remains perennially relevant. And perhaps no contemporary figure encapsulates the object of Capek’s critique more than Elon Musk. In a vision which could have been straight out of R.U.R., Musk recently said that
'The economy is fundamentally GDP per capita times capita. If you no longer have a constraint on capita because of the useful humanoid robot, it is not clear that there is any limit to the size of the economy.’
While Musk’s grasp of both maths and economics is extraordinary - making the remarkable step of dividing GDP by capita, and then multiplying it by capita again - what strikes me more is his understanding of the impact of ‘useful humanoid robots’ on the world. He, apparently, sees it as key to unlocking the potential of the world economy, the pathway to infinite economic growth. As you might have noticed, he forgets something important in this whole equation: actual people. Elon Musk’s robotic vision is inherently tied to how he thinks about people and, more specifically, workers.
The Craze for Humanoid Robots
We are living in a time of incredible hype around humanoid robots. We’ve seen a robot give evidence in the House of Lords. Boston Dynamics often releases videos of its robots’ feats, each of which rack up millions of views. And, in October, Musk’s Tesla showed us their Optimus Robot. The robot revolution seems inevitable. It is, however, not difficult to see the flaws in these technologies. Ai-Da, the robot who gave evidence at the House of Lords, broke down several times. Its ‘evidence’ was pre-recorded, and part of a frankly laughable performance. Tesla’s Optimus Robot is not dissimilar, displaying an unconvincing set of movements and relying on help from engineers. Meanwhile, Honda’s Asimo robot, perhaps the most famous of its kind, was discontinued in 2018 after almost 20 years of development. Humanoid robots, at best, are complex puppets - building anything more than that is extremely difficult.
But, could humanoid robots in their idealised form actually be useful? They are useful in certain scenarios - particularly where the human aesthetic is inherently valuable. This might include medicine or social care, where a humanoid figure might be reassuring. There has been some evidence that humanoid robots could help children with autism, by providing a patient and child-like learning companion. These creative deployments, however, are far from the future Musk is aiming for.
Beyond aesthetics, the main potential upside would be generalisability and being able to navigate a world designed for humans. It might be useful, for example, to have the same robot work in a factory and then return to the home and cook dinner. However, for meaningful productivity gains it seems that other mechanical forms are more useful and optimised than the humanoid. Crucially, they are also far more technically realistic. If you really want to increase economic output - as Musk purports to do - humanoid robots are not the best solution.
Forming a Narrative
So, if they’re not the key to the global economy, why might Musk think that they are? Why does Musk really want humanoid robots? To answer that, I think we should look at how he treats his employees. Musk is often described as a ‘terrible boss’ who, as shown by his strict rules and overworking, sees workers as wholly instrumental. His philosophy revolves around forcefully extracting every ounce of productivity from his employees, at the expense of their mental health and work/life balance. Recently, he told Twitter employees that they would need ‘to work long hours at high intensity’, and remote work was banned, while Tesla has been found to ‘[engage] in unfair labor practices’. As one Tesla factory employee succinctly put it, ‘everything feels like the future but us.’
R.U.R. showed us that narratives around humanoid robots are inseparable from the dehumanisation and exploitation of labour. For Musk, we see clear patterns where he only sees the instrumental value of his workers, and not their intrinsic value as human beings. This way of thinking necessarily forms a part of the technologies he advocates.
Recently, he told Twitter employees that they would need ‘to work long hours at high intensity’, and remote work was banned. Tesla, meanwhile, has been found to ‘[engage] in unfair labor practices’; as one Tesla factory employee put it, ‘everything feels like the future but us.’
Narratives around humanoid robots are inseparable from the dehumanisation and exploitation of labour. For Musk, we see clear patterns where he only sees the instrumental value of his workers, and not their intrinsic value as human beings. This way of thinking necessarily forms a part of the technologies he advocates.
The humanoid robot is not a viable product as much as it is emblematic of a certain ideology. It is a useful narrative for Musk, that can serve to distract from the wider problems in his companies. Within his view of the instrumentality of labour, it allows him to appear as a benevolent saviour, who will bring massive gains to the global economy. Musk’s companies are replete with fanciful stories like this. be it Neuralink or Hyperloop. The humanoid robot is one technology among many, each inflating one man’s ego. Indeed, much of the value of Musk’s companies comes directly from the narratives he advances, as they appeal to technologically optimistic investors. At the core of this is an unpleasant man who exploits his workforce for his own gain. Ultimately, when we are considering the motivation or philosophy of a technologist, first we should look at how they treat their workers.