Robot Visits Human Museum in Paul McCartney's Creepy New Music Video

First it was Obama bowing to a robot in Japan. Now it’s Paul McCartney introducing Newman the robot (yes New Man) in his latest video that was released exclusively to Japanese audiences prior to his upcoming tour of Tokyo and Osaka.

As you can see, the video depicts a human museum toured by Newman who is drawn to McCartney. The two are then joined as Newman literally pulls McCartney back to life. It evokes many levels of human/robot symbiosis.

Japan has already embraced the concept of robotic entertainment, so perhaps this is just smart marketing from McCartney. Japanese audiences are attending concerts featuring robots and filling stadiums to see computer generated holograms.

Regardless of McCartney’s personal worldview, humans and robots are undoubtedly beginning to interact in ways that were previously unfathomable, leading some to wonder what could happen if the role of humans and robots becomes reversed. At the very least, McCartney is helping to popularize the notion.

This Microsoft presentation puts the date of the human museum as the year 3116, but given the current exponential advancement of machine intelligence that date might arrive quite a bit sooner.