Natural language processing is increasingly enabling machines with artificial intelligence (AI) to interact as social partners. As a result, new forms of human-machine relationships are emerging that have been anticipated in a number of fictional narratives but can only now be tested empirically.
"The Answering Machine" is an interdisciplinary project that aims to explore human-AI interactions in their cognitive, linguistic, and emotional depth, using the theater stage as a testing ground for in-depth, iterative experimentation. Machines, social bots, digital agents, artificial intelligences, or machine learning systems are brought into improvisational dialogue with human improvisational theater actors. We vary AI language models to explore specific questions from the four participating disciplines - psychology, computational linguistics, theater and media studies - as well as general phenomena such as anthropomorphism, human perception, and human-machine co-creativity.
In collaborative labs and public performances, the project brings together technological development, artistic research, and critical reflection, stimulating a public understanding of AI that goes beyond the dystopian/utopian binary of popular fictional narratives.
