100 years after the word was first used in a Czech play, a 'robot' will actually try to write one

Around 100 years since the word 'robot' was used in a play from Czechoslovak brothers Karel and Josef Čapek, a new play, to be live-streamed due to the closure of theaters, will ask whether robots will be writing the plays of the future.

Čapek's play, titled "R.U.R," is about robots who work for humans before forming a rebellion that leads to the extinction of the human race. It was premiered on Jan. 25, 1921.

100 years to the day, Theaitre will be streaming 'Can a robot write a theatre play?' to a global audience using a team of experts including theatre representatives and artificial intelligence programmers who are based in Prague. The performance is based at the Švanda Theater.

The event will be part of a larger "Robothon" that will celebrate the origins of the word from January 22-24 with a 36-hour hackathon focused on how robotics can respond to today's challenges.

Daniel Hrbek, director of the theater who also directs the production, told Proti šedi:

The computer is under the supervision of a team of computer scientists led by a computer linguist from Charles University.

The text was written in English, translated into Czech by machine translation. 

Playwright David Košťák, who, together with computer scientists, oversaw the entire process.

*Due to the current situation, the date may be subject to change.