Robots are going to need a better story

In 1897, Georges Méliès made Gugusse et l’Automate, one of the earliest films to feature a robot. The machine grows, fights its maker, and is eventually destroyed. It set the tone. For much of the next 120 years, our impressions of robots came from the silver screen. From the terrifying liquid-metal T-1000 in Terminator 2 to the murderous NS-5s in I, Robot, we have repeatedly imagined that the machines we invent will eventually turn on us. Of course, for every evil machine, there’s a WALL-...