Karel's play was entitled "Rossum's Universal Robots." The theme of the play was robots controlling humans in society. Although he introduced the idea of robots, Karl Capek was skeptical about how much of an impact robots could have. He rejected all suggestions that a robot could ever replace a human being, or have feelings such as love or rebellion.
While the concept of a robot has been around for a very long time, it wasn't until the 1940's that the modern day robot was born, with the arrival of computers. The term robotics refers to the study and use of robots; it came about in 1941 and was first adopted by Issac Asimov, a scientist and writer. One of the first robots Asimov wrote about was a robo-therapist. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, Joseph Weizembaum, wrote the Eliza program in 1966, a modern counterpart to Asimov's fictional character. Weizenbaum initially programed Eliza with 240 lines of code to simulate a psychotherapist. The program answered questions with questions.
Asimov created the four laws of robot behavior, cyber laws all robots had to obey and a fundamental part of positronic robotic engineering. The Isaac Asimov FAQ states, "Asimov claimed that the laws were originated by John w. Campbell in a conversation they had on December 23, 1940. Campbell in turn maintained that he picked them out of Asimov's stories and discussions, and that his role was merely to state them explicitly. The first story to explicitly .
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state the three laws was "Runaround", which appeared in the March 1942 issue of "Astounding Science Fiction." Unlike the three laws, however, the Zeroth law is not a fundamental part of positronic robotic engineering, is not a part of all positronic robots, and, in fact, requires a very sophisticated robot to even accept it.".
Law Zeroth: A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.