ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

A misfit robot finds his métier—and his bliss—at an art museum.

Ever since a paint-speckled chip was inserted into his head at the assembly factory, Robot has known he was different from the other automatons who work at the warehouse. Abstract washes of color fill his dreams at night—a welcome contrast from his monochromatic world—and he often daydreams, which leads to a wrong turn when he’s sent for reprogramming by a disapproving supervisor. Stumbling out of the warehouse for the first time, he’s struck by the vivid colors. When he wanders into an art museum, his creative spirit is unleashed—with some tech support from a painting course CD-ROM he inserts into his drive. The result is exuberant, expressionistic explosions of color brushed onto walls inside and outside, all over the city. “It was big, colorful, and grand. Just like his dreams,” the author concludes, rounding off his AI epiphany with perhaps-prescient images of the metal artist taking a bow before his solo show at the art museum, followed by images of robots in an array of roles from chef and country singer to filmmaker and beat dancer. Young readers with unformed creative urges of their own will relate to Robot’s feeling of otherness and may take heart in seeing how he finds his way. The robots come in many shapes; Biedrzycki goes retro for his depiction of Robot. Human characters are racially diverse.

A celebration of the artistic spirit, overlaid with wry topicality.