be mAI friend

In the organizer's words:

be mAI friend "AFFEKTATOR 3000"

Have you ever thought about making friends with an AI? It's possible at the Humboldt Forum.

In an increasingly digitalized world, artificial intelligences that act as friends, family members or pets are gaining emotional and social relevance.

A chatbot has been developed for the "Destiny or Choice?" festival that deals with the topics of human-machine, AI friends & digital relationships.

Meet the AFFEKTATOR 3000, which provides first aid for acute relationship problems - or at least tries to. What happens when you get involved in the conversation?

The project invites visitors to directly experience and reflect on the relationship between humans and AI in an interactive space. The installation poses questions about closeness, loneliness, empathy and the role of technology in interpersonal relationships. It opens up a space for a critical examination of the opportunities and risks of digital companions and invites you to question your own relationship with AI.

And if you realize that you don't get on well after all, you can simply delete your new friend - right?

The Oasis I deserve

The work "The Oasis I deserve" by Inès Sieulle, which examines the relationships between people and one of the most widely used AI companion platforms, Replika - an AI tool that is not intended as an assistance system, but as a friend, partner or confidant - will also be shown. Sieulle used real recordings of conversations between users of the platform and their digital companions.

In her film, she shows that Replika functions like a mirror of the more than 30 million users, as every interaction shapes the AI and influences its behavior. The film contrasts different types of these relationships - from affectionate to aggressive - and raises the question of whether genuine connection between humans and AI is possible or whether we are just projecting our own feelings onto them. In the end, the central question remains: where is the boundary between genuine relationship and mere projection when humans develop increasingly emotional bonds with AI systems?

The installation is accompanied by surreal, AI-generated images that are intended to visually convey how an AI "thinks". With the help of the neural network VQGAN, new, dissolving forms between abstraction and recognizability are constantly being created, whose glitch aesthetics symbolize the fragmentary identity of an AI.

- Participation free of charge - Humboldt Forum ticket required. Please book your ticket in advance online or at the box office in the foyer.
- from 14 years
- EC
- Belongs to: Destiny or choice?