How should we see robots as they roll (or walk, or fly, or swim) into our lives? As animals to train? Children to guide? Loyal servants? Amiable friends? Therapists? Or therapons? Fellow workers? Fellow artists?
People are likely to try on all these attitudes. The same person will probably cycle through some of them, maybe in the course of a single day of modern life in 2050.
Agnieszcka Pilat is an artist who ponders these questions and makes art that brings people face to face with these questions. She paints portraits of robots and machines, and she sometimes sets robots to create art, while people watch and (one hopes) think about the divide between human and machine, artificial and genuine, creative and engineered.
Pilat and I spoke about how people respond to the sight of robots painting, how robots surprise people, where our sense of robot personality comes from, the nature of creativity, and why people are scared that AI will start telling stories better than we can. And, also, the baby who threw a pacifier at a robot. Give us a listen!
As always, a reminder that the transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors. Let me know about any howlers.
To Understand a Robot, Teach It to Make Art