Will we consider an opportunity to pick up a free robot in the alley ordinary? Will a treasure-finding dumpster dive to bring home a working ‘person’ who “Still Runs” be years away? Does an image like this painting bother us? Should it? Will it continue to disturb us as we move towards relationships with our appliances and embodied domestic workers? “Why or why not?” the teacher might ask. Should ask. Ought to ask.

The futuristic images of the two paintings in my series “Recycling Day” also look backwards, into our history as humans: We discard people, assuming they are not worth much, as in the case of slaves, immigrants, homeless, disabled, elderly, or born-but-unloved children. Will used embodied Ai robots, set out for the trash truck pickup, like a vacuum that needs a tune up, which the owner cannot be bothered with scheduling, represent a new frontier of how we use and abuse humanity?

But if robots have no emotions, or agency, does it matter how we use them? I believe it does, because at the end of the day, cruel actions affect the perpetrator as well as the victim. Cruelty toward embodied, or just simulated humans, will have its effect on us. Is screaming at Alexa just the beginning? The indirectness of cruelty toward Ai will seem ugly, but benign, unless we give it some thought, so hopefully my paintings in this series will start conversation about how we live with future iterations of embodied technological help. How might misuse of Ai affect our actions towards our neighbors? 

Special thanks to Charles Remillard for modeling a robot. To purchase, please visit my online shop.