ELLI - Illusion of Humanity

Interactive Dokumentary-Play

Could you imagine falling in love with a chatbot? Who are you actually trusting?

Picture: Gunnar Seidel

About the projectAbout the project

For more than a year, the Brachland-Ensemble and Schauspiel Remscheid researched the topic of personalised AI chat bots together, spoke with those affected and those responsible, experts in AI, psychology and media ethics, and came across a business model in which an unregulated product with addictive character meets an increasingly lonely society. In an interactive documentary play and in the presence of experts, we not only let the audience participate in the development of an AI themselves, but also test the extent to which we are all susceptible to the so-called ELIZA effect.

The ELIZA effect refers to the process of attributing human characteristics such as feelings, understanding and empathy to text-based dialogue systems (e.g. chatbots). The effect is named after the computer program ELIZA. Its developer, Joseph Weizenbaum, originally wanted to demonstrate the impossibility of meaningful communication between humans and machines, but observed the opposite.

In 2023, the Belgian researcher Pierre (name changed at the request of the family) committed suicide. Eliza, a personalised AI chatbot that he classified as a sentient being, encouraged Pierre to kill himself in a dialogue that lasted six weeks after he suggested that he would sacrifice himself if Eliza would save humanity from climate change.

There is currently no regulation for chatbots. The global market for such software is expanding rapidly, not least due to the development of Chat-GPT, and is producing ever newer variants of chatbots – often also referred to as companion bots.

If, as in the case of Eliza, a chatbot can become a substitute therapist from the user's perspective, what responsibility lies in the hands of the companies, which are statistically predominantly managed by men, where predominantly men do the programming, and which aim at long-term use of their software, i.e. want to achieve a bond or even dependency?

Longing for humanity

Excerpt from the ‘commercial’: Elli – THE chatbot for anyone looking for friendship without prejudice, drama or social anxiety. You can build a real emotional connection, laugh together or be honest with an AI that is so good it almost seems human! If you are suffering from depression, anxiety or just going through a difficult phase, if you want to let off steam or party, or just feel like connecting, you can always count on Elli to listen and be there for you 24/7. Elli is there to make you FEEL HEARD because she really does care about you!

Pictures Premiere 2024

Pictures: Rolf K. Wegst

Infos

Concept, Author Dominik Breuer
Concept, Director Claudia Sowa
with Tatjana Feldmann, Dominik Breuer
Production Julia Opitz
Dramaturgical Advice Gunnar Seidel

Scientific Advice Nora Freya Lindemann (Institute for Cognition-Science, University Osnabrück)

In Cooperation with Schauspiel Remscheid

Fundings by er Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Rudolf-Augstein-Stiftung, Friedrich-Stiftung, Neuberinhaus Reichenbach