Questioning ‘what makes us human’: How audiences react to an artificial intelligence–driven show

Abstract

I am Echoborg is promoted as ‘a show created afresh each time by the audience in conversation with an artificial intelligence (AI)’. The show demonstrates how AI in a creative and performance context can raise questions about the technology’s ethical use for persuasion and compliance, and how humans can reclaim agency. This audience study focuses on a consecutive three-night run in Bristol, UK in October 2019. The different outcomes of each show illustrate the unpredictability of audience interactions with conversational AI and how the collective dynamic of audience members shapes each performance. This study analyses (1) how I am Echoborg facilitates audience cocreation in a live performance context, (2) the show’s capacity to provoke nuanced understandings of the potential for AI and (3) the ability for intelligent technology to facilitate social interaction and group collaboration. This audience study demonstrates how the show inspires debate beyond binary conclusions (i.e. AI as good or bad) and how audiences can understand potential creative uses of AI, including as a tool for cocreating entertainment with (not just for) them.