Tesla recently shared brief footage of its humanoid robot “Optimus” dancing. It is a weirdly entrancing video because there’s something both frightening and awe-inspiring about a physically competent humanesque robot, especially one that can pull off a jazzercise combination. My logic is that a robot capable of line dancing is also capable of strangling me to death, but maybe I’m just an alarmist.

One thing in the video was particularly striking to me: Although most of its dance steps are best suited for a frat party, Optimus apparently had been taught — or, I guess programmed with — some specific ballet moves. Anyone who has taken a ballet class would readily detect that Optimus posed in an arabesque, a passé, and a fifth position. Optimus doesn’t have great technique, but maybe that’s an improvement for a future model, since Elon Musk declared that “Optimus will perform ballet perfectly.” I don’t know whether I should interpret that as a promise or a threat, but I nevertheless think it is cool that something so eerily futuristic and high-tech fused with something so traditional and tech-free. 

These electronic counterparts to the human species raise serious ethical and moral questions about society, but I have some really silly questions for the Tesla robotics nerds that I would like addressed first. Why did you guys think it was important to equip Optimus with ballet steps in addition to funky club moves? Did you use Google to find ballet videos and try to replicate them, or did you host an actual ballerina in the lab to provide detailed instructions? Can Optimus lift ballerinas, as the men do in a pas de deux? Are there currently rehearsals for a Swan Lake production with Optimus bots as the entire cast? 

Honestly, I don’t have much to say about Optimus because I’m still reckoning with the fact that it exists. Yesterday, I wouldn’t have believed such technology was possible. Plenty of smart people could have insisted to me that such products have been developed, but I could have only been convinced by encountering actual video proof. I certainly won’t be referring to humanoid products like these as “artists,” since they don’t have creative impulses and only do what we tell them to do. Still, I’ll admit that there’s something exciting about watching technology and art merge in ways that were unimaginable not too long ago. And it becomes increasingly scary as the quality improves.