A Robot Wrote This

Abstract

EXTRA! EXTRA! THE ROBOTS ARE TAKING OVER! Artificial intelligence is beginning to replace a variety of positions previously held by their human counterparts. With this shift, there has been a massive pushback, especially in the arts. The arts have always been relegated as the divine gift of man, something that separates us from the beasts. The arts are a way of reflecting and explaining our humanity. The thought of something other than humans holding the same skill can be deeply threatening. But as AI begins to compose music, paintings, sculptures, and even poetry, this foreign threat is now at our doors. While some argue for the separation of bot and artist to be stronger than ever, I am investigating what that unification could look like. “A Robot Wrote This,” the world’s first AI-generated children’s musical, is an example of what could result from this sort of unity. I worked with human artists to create a piece of theatre written and developed in collaboration with robot artists. It explores what it means to actively collaborate with AI art makers, as opposed to using them as tools. AI’s of all kinds participated, providing rehearsal experiments and inspiration for the show. The company then explored the AI’s contribution, not only investigating the direct output of the AI but their relationships with AI as a whole. From this, a series of characters, scenarios, and text were composed to respond back to the AI. A set of generative text algorithms, specifically the GPT-2, then developed the source material based on the actor’s input. From this output, a select set of lines, lyrics, and elements were organized by a writer to develop a script. This back and forth translation served as our means of collaboration, resulting in a piece of theatre in which all dialogue is written by a robot.But can a robot really write? Yes. This project argues the validity of AI authorship. The piece encourages us to move into the future excited and open to AI collaboration. And the play works to foster empathy for not only AI, but all the virtual assistants, Roombas, and every other bleep-bloorp-y brethren with which we share the planet.