OKAY actual serious lore drop now
Robots essentially all have interests they dedicate their lives to to an extreme degree. Outside of flexing an engineers skills the main reason robots are created by humans is for this reason. Robots usually have motivations artificially programmed into them and humans believe they can then be easily trained to be professionals in almost any subject they want with little distraction.
Some robots are built with no pre programmed motivations and go down their own path. These are self motivated interests. but most robots have predetermined motivators added in by the person who built them. Usually to help humanity in some way, help a company or simply help or follow in the footsteps of their creator, these are artificial interests.
While artificially programmed motivations are handy to the humans around them, it’s been shown that robots artificial interests can cause them significant mental strain if pushed. Robots themselves rarely know if an interest they have is programmed or self determined which also causes a bit of distress on top of it.
Individual modern robot creators will sometimes leave robots as complete blank slates, usually hoping it’d make them more “generalists” in topics. But robots usually just attach themselves to a subject instead.
Many robot creators also implant interests believing them to be beneficial to the robot, eg: “robots motivation is to be nice!” without fully understanding what the full implications of the interest could be, how extreme they can be and how it could conflict with the robots personality.
For a character example: Lithiums creator put socialisation as an artificial interest hoping it would make him a fun and extroverted robot. It backfired a bit when it made Lithium crave any form of attention whether it be positive or negative just to fulfill that motivation.
Artificial motivations can be harmless if the robot is put in the right conditions. Being surrounded by people who are interested in the subject and not being put under significant pressure to fulfil tasks helps.
Some interests explained:
While some are self explanatory others are more general so
Caretaking: typically given to a robot by a creator that needs help with things in general, sometimes elderly or lonely creators. They’re programmed to be invested in other peoples emotions and help around with chores. Infant care, elder care and child care fall under these but are more specifically programmed. Although this doesn’t automatically make them sympathetic to other people, just sensitive to the feelings of others around them.
Organisation: Can be anything from organising papers, keeping on top of dates or organising social events. Usually for robots destined to work office jobs or be someone’s personal secretary. Robots with organisation as a motivator tend to have good memories but it also has a tendency to make robots really uptight or strict. Also has a tendency to give robots obsessive behaviours if artificially programmed.
Helping others: similar to caretaking but just focused on the social aspect. Wanting other people to be mentally well and happy is their motivation
Socialising: usually just makes the robots extra extroverted. Though like I said with Lithium it can backfire