Robot.

Ezra Klein has a good post up about surgical robots,  a topic I have briefly touched on here with a similar general conclusion.

Writing and thinking about robots has reminded me of a good piece of trivia - the origin of the word robot.  It was introduced by a Czech writer Karel Čapek in a play RUR.  It is derived from the Czech work "robota", which means "labor".  Incidentially, anyone remotely interested in science fiction should read his books RUR and War with the Newts if only to see how much of the current science fiction was concieved as early as 1920.