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3 • A shrine over which a bird may be made to revolve and sing by worshipers turning a wheel. • Figures made to dance by fire on an altar. • An automaton, the head of which continues attached to the body, after a knife has entered the neck on one side, passed completely through it, and out at the other the animal will drink immediately after the operation. These inventions sound like truly remarkable achievements of modern technology: artificial machines—robots—that are able to perform complex actions with little or no input from live humans, except that the machines described here were first built by the inventor Heron (also Hero) of Alexandria some- time before 70 CE (Woodcroft 1851, 93, 95, 109–111). As the second decade of the 21st century draws to a close, the role of robots in human society appears to be, at the very least, extraordinarily promising. In fact, robots are likely to become so essential to and prevalent in human society that, as one futurist has asked, “the central question of 2025 will be: What are people for in a world that does not need their labor, 1 History and Background Mademoiselle Claire, an automaton built by Robert Herdner, is used to hand out surgical instruments from a trolley at l’Hopital Bretonneau in France. From Le Petit Journal, Paris, August 18, 1912. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)