Who Wants to Write an Email: Arts, AI and Self-Expression
Year Awarded
2022
Amount
€37,414
- Organisation:Trinity College Dublin (TCD)
- Audience:General Public
- Format:Informal Education
- Location:Carlow, Donegal, Dublin, Leitrim
- Topic:STEAM
Project Summary
Who Wants To Write An Email? (WWTWAE) is a theatrical interactive game show about the ethics of opaque AI predictive text applications (i.e. SmartCompose). It engages over 300 participants in discussing and debating AI’s effects on their identities and shaping of their everyday communications. This novel art-science experience applies humour to a familiar game show format to draw in audiences who don’t typically seek-out STEM topics.
A high-calibre production staged similarly to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, WWTWAE’s dramatic set, lighting, tense music, slick animations, and escalating rounds of questions create an absurd amount of comedic tension as contestants obsessively try to make sense of writing suggestions in emails made by an algorithm.
The host, played by the lead artist, uses improvisational methods to engage the contestant and audience in puzzling through answers and making use of their lifelines: 50/50, polling the audience, or calling a STEM expert. During breaks, commercials show co-creation participants pitching new AI settings they desire for predictive text applications. A surprise final round invites the entire audience to imagine AI settings, and walk away with humorous prizes.
Co-creation workshops with adult education groups and STEM experts drive development of the show content, established through partnerships with ADAPT Research Centre and Digital Humanities Centre at TCD.
Key project outputs include web-based resources: videos, audience polling insights, evaluation report, mini toolkit with activities for educators and curious citizens, practice insights on improvisational methods in live co-creation and novel evaluation approaches for interactive art-science experiences.