Beauty to an Artificial Intelligence

This is something that's been on my mind for a while, and it's been hard to shake - even in beautiful New Zealand. Thought I'd use some of the New Year's energy to write it up. It's a bit long - despite my efforts to get it down to a manageable size, but let's start somewhere. There's a scene in the movie "I, Robot", inspired by Asimov's series of the same name, where the titular robot tells the main character that he cannot create a work of art. He does this while creating a rather striking sketch that most humans would be happy to have been the creator of. This movie stands out in my memory as unique because it briefly touches on what the purpose of existence might be to an artificial mind, unlike most I've seen. Intelligences in popular culture are often portrayed as villains, and even the ones on the side of humanity seem far too concerned with the same things we are - domination, power, control, even glimpses of happiness - that I'm given to wonder if it's been given any serious thought. It's something that's been stuck in my mind for a while, but I have to admit I haven't made any significant progress. That said I'm hoping I can repeat some of the questions I've had and wonder about what the answers might be without making myself any more lost than I already am. To start, let's consider what I think is the popular perception of AI. Before we do so, I'd like to borrow some terminology to define what I'm talking about as an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), also called a strong AI. We'll explore the meaning of this term later, but for now let's consider it to be a general mind that can perform any intellectual task a human being can. This definition if you'll notice does not require consciousness or sentience, each of which is a concept just as complicated if not more. For now, let's forget about what an Artificial SuperIntelligence would be - which in my mind is an advanced AGI - and use the term'intelligence' and'artificial intelligence' to refer to an AGI.