Perhaps robots are also a little bit more individual than the so-called individual in the crowd…because just now in Japan there are one hundred thousand robots – mechanical men – working in the factories. Suddenly, within these two months, a strange phenomenon is happening. The government is worried, the scientists are worried, and they have not been able to find any explanation. Up to now the robots have been working silently; nobody had ever thought that they would suddenly start a rebellion. But ten people have been killed within two months.

A robot is working – and a robot works according to a computer, according to a pre-programmed plan; he cannot go in any way that is different from the program that has been fed into it. But, strangely enough, these ten robots suddenly stopped working, got hold of some man who was around, and just killed him. The figure of ten men being killed is from the government – it cannot be true. No government speaks the truth.

My own experience is that it is always good to multiply all the figures given by the government by at least ten. If they are saying ten persons have died, one hundred persons must have died, or more. They are trying to pacify the masses – “Don’t be worried, we will find what went wrong.” But they have no idea.

In fact, any act that is not programmed into the computer, the robot is not capable of doing – and these were not the programs. The robots showed some sign of freedom, they showed some sign of individuality, some indication of rebellion.

Computers cannot answer any new questions. They can answer only questions for which information has already been given to them. Naturally they don’t have any intelligence, they have only a memory system, a filing system which records. Of course, they are perfect in their efficiency. No man can be that perfect, once in a while you forget. And it is absolutely necessary, for life to go on, to forget most of the unnecessary things that are happening every day – otherwise your memory system will be too loaded. But the computer is a mechanism. You cannot load it too much, it has no life.

I have heard…a man was asking a computer, “Can you tell me where my father is?” He was just joking with the scientist who was working on that great computer, and the computer said, “Your father? He went fishing just three hours ago.”

The man laughed and said to the scientist, “You are creating a stupid computer. My father has been dead for three years.”

And he was shocked that the computer laughed – for which it was never programmed – and said, “Don’t be gullible. It was not your father who died three years ago, it was only the husband of your mother. Your father has gone fishing three hours ago; you can go to the beach and you will meet him.”

Right now this is only a story, but looking at the actual facts happening in Japan, the story takes on a certain reality.

But man in the crowd has always behaved blindly. If you pull the same man out of the crowd and ask him, “What were you doing? Can you do it alone, on your own?” he will feel embarrassed. And you will be surprised to hear his answer: “On my own I cannot do such a stupid thing, but when I am in a crowd something strange happens.”