[mjburgess]

Because robots are built to perform the illusion of being animal-like, and often human-like more specifically.

So there's a theatrical game being played when interacting with these devices that makes them valuable to the people playing that game.

More generally, when the adtech companies selling the current round of AI do the same, without any irony, it's usually a mixture of charlatanism, selling and legal avoidance.

(Eg., that "ChatGPT wrote X" is a kind of theatrical game wherein OpenAI are the material beneficiaries, and most others, are the loosers).