Their job is more serious. It fulfils that shivery philosophical mission pursued by the android Replicants in Blade Runner, who want to demonstrate that they have acquired a capacity for consciousness. And it also returns the robot to the circumstances of its birth. The Czech dramatist Karel Capek coined the word in his 1920 play R.U.R., which describes a revolt among the synthetic labourers moulded in the workshops of Rossum’s Universal Robots. They’re the original east European workers on zero-hours contracts. The artificial maids and porters and sex-workers who glide through Humans are their descendants – here, with an obliging smile, to expose the moral shortcomings of their organic employers.