R.U.R. Rossum’s Universal Robots - Karel Čapek

A stage play about an industrialists attempt to maximise productivity by replacing human workers with artificial ones dubbed `Robots`.

A small excerpt.

DOMIN

That's good. But a working machine must not play the piano, must not feel happy, must not do a whole lot of other things. A gasoline motor must not have tassels or ornaments, Miss Glory. And to manufacture artificial workers is the same thing as to manufacture gasoline motors. The process must be of the simplest, and the product of the best from a practical point of view. What sort of worker do you think is the best from a practical point of view?

HELENA
What?

DOMIN
What sort of worker do you think is the best from a practical point of view?

HELENA

Perhaps the one who is most honest and hardworking.

DOMIN

No; the one that is the cheapest. The one whose requirements are the smallest. Young Rossum invented a worker with the minimum amount of requirements. He had to simplify him. He rejected everything that did not contribute directly to the progress of work!–– everything that makes man more expensive. In fact, he rejected man and made the Robot. My dear Miss Glory, the Robots are not people. Mechanically they are more perfect than we are, they have an enormously developed intelligence, but they have no soul.