Robots will be able to produce excellent art for human consumption.
If sufficiently humanoid, robots will have personal experiences, encoded in art, from which humans would learn. These experiences need not be drawn from the world identical to the one inhabited by humans. As Karl Sims's "Evolved Virtual Creatures" (1994) illustrates, even in disparate environments, shared evolutionary pressures are sufficient to generate learning experiences that can evoke cross-species empathy.
Furthermore, robots will be much better than humans at reading human emotions (as betrayed by facial expressions, breathing, perspiration, heart rate, the choice of words, the pace of the speech, etc.) and interpreting human actions, and will have access to a much larger pool of humans (if only because of robots’ unlimited lifespan and the ability to upload the memories of other robots). It is not uncommon for a writer to lead a dull life and document others’ adventures. Robots will be able to do that and much more. (Robots would also make excellent matchmakers.)
If sufficiently humanoid, robots will have personal experiences, encoded in art, from which humans would learn. These experiences need not be drawn from the world identical to the one inhabited by humans. As Karl Sims's "Evolved Virtual Creatures" (1994) illustrates, even in disparate environments, shared evolutionary pressures are sufficient to generate learning experiences that can evoke cross-species empathy.
Furthermore, robots will be much better than humans at reading human emotions (as betrayed by facial expressions, breathing, perspiration, heart rate, the choice of words, the pace of the speech, etc.) and interpreting human actions, and will have access to a much larger pool of humans (if only because of robots’ unlimited lifespan and the ability to upload the memories of other robots). It is not uncommon for a writer to lead a dull life and document others’ adventures. Robots will be able to do that and much more. (Robots would also make excellent matchmakers.)
Robots would also create art appreciated by other robots. This art would succinctly communicate robot experience to other robots, in a provocative way, which would invite idiosyncratic interpretations by the members of the robot audience.
Robots would also be excellent performers of art created by humans. One of the means by which dance communicates is by exciting mirror neurones in the audience. The excitation of mirror neurones also occurs across species. (Indeed, mirror neurones were first discovered in monkeys who observed human experimenters.) For instance, humans enjoy observing and petting cats. This excitation even occurs by observing cartoon characters. Eventually, it would be possible to design a robot dancer who would excite mirror neurones more than any human dancer would. (Just as it is possible to draw a picture of Nixon than would look more like Nixon than Nixon does—to borrow Ramachandran’s metaphor.) Indeed, the dancers at the world's leading ballet companies are closer to such superhuman creatures than they are to typical audience members.
