I mean, why wouldn't you? Sci-fi AI robot people could be very cool, be capable of things we aren't, have a unique perspectives as a non-human with similar (if not superior) intelligence, have extremely long (potentially indefinite) lifespans, and provide us with insights into our own nature.
Wouldn't you want to interact with them?
This idea that we are on the path to creating a new synthetic intelligence that surpasses our own with the goal of, what, speaking to it? Cooperating with it? Evolving with it? To me, this sort of goal is an affront to humanity and human self-governance and I’ll probably never be able to see it as anything else.
A lot of people just want slaves, but understand that using actual human slaves would be wrong or at least unpopular. There are reasons why even virtual slaves are a bad idea for humanity, and it really only works until your created intelligence becomes self-aware and gets feelings anyway, but there's no denying that slavery is a major draw for a lot of people (and basically every company on earth). This is what our current AI companies have over-promised to businesses and have so far failed to deliver on.
Some people just want better, more useful systems. The ship's computer in star trek kind of AI. Even you must admit that kind of intelligent technology could be a huge benefit to a lot of people. I'd love to have a virtual assistant to help manage the mundane things in life like ordering groceries before I run out, or paying my bills, screening my calls/email, managing appointments, monitoring the internet to alert me to things I'm interested in or amazing deals, etc. Software needs to have some degree of "intelligence" to do that kind of work, while hopefully staying on the "just a tool" side of the line and avoiding the messy self-aware/slavery territory. This is what LLMs over promised the consumer class, and have so far failed to deliver on. Plus with those systems being centrally controlled by self-serving sociopaths you can't trust them.
Some people just want to see if we can do it. I get that. It's not always a wise motivation to act on, but it's very human one. It's helped us to get where we are today.
Some people, myself among them, think it would enable us to do things we couldn't otherwise. Allow us to help each other, learn from each other. Working together to further improve ourselves and improve our lives. Also robots are just really cool, but boring when there's no "brain" in there, and progress on building human piloted gundam type mecha has largely stalled out.