In week 8, the group and our tutor came back together to discuss and share our outcomes from last week and how to proceed with our project. We shared the outcome of our individual interviews and how we can use this. The overall result of our one-to-one conversations was that mostly the interviewees had a positive attitude regarding AI in the future, but limitations regarding creativity kept on arising.
We continued discussing our idea of an AI and robot agency that will exist in the future and brainstormed how to additionally bring in an interesting consideration to make people think about. We reviewed how we all imagine this agency when taking a closer look and what questions and obstacles could arise. We came up with the thought that how the builder and creator who installs it affects the robot itself. By that, we mean how his emotional and mental state will affect the machine? Would the machine work or behave differently depending on if his mental state is weak and vulnerable or strong and happy? However, we didn’t stop there. We thought even further and questioned how then this could have an influence on the user of the robot? Can a robot with an engineer who is in an unhappy state by the time of programming the tool, affect the user who is in a good mental state? You could also think the other way around and say ‘’Would a robot who was installed by a person in a satisfied state have an effect in any way on a person in a bad place in their life?’’ This makes this whole thought become a cycle that we could present on a poster for this week’s group activity of creating a prototype of our imagined future. One poster could explain our idea of the agency with diagrams and effects of emotions (the cycle), while another poster could be a game to support our idea. One peer in the group also mentioned how a game as support could be a photo box in which we take pictures of the person with their consent who is joining our games and work with AI. We decided to go to the art shop on our next meeting to get posters and create something that will portray this thought of AI and feeling very well with different options by drawing and writing on it. This could theoretically also be supported by creations like a small installation, if possible like we did for our box of uncertainties.
The thought of the fact that different people always install these robots and how this could have a reaction to it is also important if you think about how different the installation could be depending on what company created it. Perhaps the different robots that can be hired at the agency who come from different producers also have different reactions or some kind of behavior, depending on if they come from a company with a satisfying or rough work environment. This also is a speculation that has to be taken into account. For instance, they could come from company XYZ which creates an uncomfortable environment that also has a highly negative influence on the employee’s mental health and is therefore also less smart that the automation from company B, which focuses and cares about the mental health of their worker’s and creates the best possible environment for them. This can also depend on what different data sources the companies work with and what effect this could have on the final outcome.
A final consideration of us was that our agency could also make improvements and offer machines that are enhanced in terms of showing more emotions towards humans. For now, humans always have to adapt to AI, when we look at examples like Siri or navigation systems in the car. We can see how we always have to speak in a different way, be clearer for the system and have to adapt to technology. This point inquires advancement. Instead, they could be programmed to show more emotions when answering in order to be more realistic and adapt better to the human itself. As for now, robots are still very limited in terms of changing their voice or showing a reaction to humans that doesn’t sound monotone. In our imagination of the future though, we see engines that adapt to the human and envision a creation that displays more emotions, as well as realistic reactions.