People often see double when they see a robot. They know it’s just a collection of metal and plastic parts. And they think it might be sad after working so hard all day. Or mad. Or glad. Now that AI can talk, sing, laugh and cry, people are having the same kind of double sight when they talk to their virtual assistants and virtual friends.
How can people perceive two beings in one body? One source of insights is to look at other times in life when people “know” two things at once about the same entity: When we’re watching a movie, TV show, or stage play. When you watch Beetlejuice, you know you’re also watching Michael Keaton, who plays him. Where’s the boundary between actor and role? Is it the same for everyone in the audience? How much control do we have over that perception?
These kinds of questions apply to robots and AI more and more, as machines become better at playing the part of people – or at least, of characters based on people. The answers are already influencing how designers think about future devices, and how people experience “intelligent” machines.
Which is why I was eager to speak with Christopher Grobe, a Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University, who has studied many different kinds of performance – including the performance of machines that act like people. (One of his current projects is a look at the way 20th century theories of acting intertwined with theories of computers and robots “playing” human beings.
In this podcast, we discussed those connections, as well as ways performance theory can inform robot design. (For example, we considered that maybe it doesn’t matter if a robot can feel emotions – if it can “play” those emotions enough to move you, its “audience.”) It was fascinating to see a perspective on AI and robotics that sees these technologies as new forms of an age-old practice: Making one thing act like another. Robots are a new technology that draws on the same human desires and skills that made puppets, toys, stuffies, and theater.
Caveat: As always, the transcript is AI-generated, and contains a few errors.
How 'Acting Human' Is Like Human Acting