Art & tech talk: Bringing robots on stage - 26 Oct 2023

A short introduction to improvisational theater fused with artificial intelligence was follow by a demonstration of the comedy show, that received five star review during this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, one of the worlds biggest arts festival in the world.

Improbotics is a theatre lab, science comedy show, and a live Turing test. An artificial intelligence-based chatbot performs alongside a human cast of improvisers, trying to pass as human.

Improbotics has been featured on the BBC, Global News Canada, RTÉ One, and Bloomberg and in the New York Times, Financial Times, Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal, New Scientist, and many other international press, TV, and radio outlets.

Piotr Mirowski is a research scientist in artificial intelligence and robotics at Google DeepMind as well as an improviser, actor, and director. He is also one of the creators of Improbotics.

Jenny Elfving teaches Swedish and creative writing for social change at SSE. She is also a writer, an improviser, and the artistic director for the Stockholm based Improbotics group.

This tech talk was a collaboration between the SSE Art and Tech Initiatives, CIVICA, and the SSE pedagogy team.