In February 2020, nearly three years ago, I sketched a picture of a robot holding a cocktail. I drew it in dry erase marker, on a whiteboard in our lab’s conference room.
My sketch was meant as a kind of whimsical nod to a future where we will all be hanging out with our A.I. progeny. It wasn’t meant to last very long.
But just a few weeks later, on March 12, 2020, everyone left NYU and the University went virtual. When we all came back in September 2021, the sketch was still there.
And somehow, in all that time, nobody saw fit to erase it. I think it became a sort of lab mascot.
The robot, and the cocktail, are still there today. I took the below photo this afternoon.