"Moxon's Master" is a short story by American writer Ambrose Bierce, which speculates on the nature of life and intelligence.
First published in The San Francisco Examiner on April 16, 1899, it is one of the first descriptions of a robot in English-language literature, though written well before the word 'robot' came to be used.
The master, Moxon, who creates a chess-playing automaton, boasts to the narrator that even though machines have no brains, they can still think and demonstrate intelligence or mind and therefore should be treated just like men of flesh and blood.
[1] After a thorough discussion about what it means to "think" and what is the nature of "intelligence", the narrator leaves Moxon's house in confusion.
The narrator wakes up in a hospital room where Haley, Moxon's servant, tells him that he saved him from imminent death.
Edgar Allan Poe had written an analysis of the chess-playing automaton in 1836, "Maelzel's Chess Player", offering an explanation of how the illusion was accomplished.
The main theme of the story is not only whether machines can think as we know it, but whether they can equal or even excel human beings.