"While teaching a robot to paint sounds esoteric, futuristic even - it’s really the most human thing to do. Our ancestors made handprints on the walls of caves and carvings in stone before putting brushes on canvas. We use tools to create art.

Humans create handprints and portraits to express themselves, to say ‘I am here’. Across eons and miles, that self-expression still fundamentally matters to us.

So we take a robot — a machine modelled after ourselves — and first teach it to express itself in the same way because it is our instinct to do so. We want it to be able to say "I am here too."