In a unique Halloween experiment, the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development is inviting the public to “Spook the Machine.” This project explores whether AI can respond to human-created scares by challenging participants to frighten intelligent machines with eerie images.
The AI Halloween Project was initiated by the Center for Humans and Machines. Image Credit: MPI for Human Development
In recent years, breakthroughs in artificial intelligence have enabled machines to create visual art, compose music, and produce videos. They interact with us, assist with academic tasks, and are even beginning to take on roles traditionally held by humans.
Amid this technological disruption and rising mistrust, many find solace in the fact that machines lack true emotions. However, recent advancements in language-based AI have shown a growing ability for these systems to convincingly mimic human emotions.
As such, this artistic-scientific project seeks to explore how machines might display human-like emotional expressions.
Halloween—a time typically associated with fear—also serves as a moment for social and emotional bonding. Could the act of scaring an AI bring a playful element to this shared experience, prompting new reflections on the human-machine relationship?
This question is central to the Spook the Machine experiment, launched just in time for Halloween.
Emotions are a fundamental part of human communication. Even though machines do not have emotions, they can be trained to display them, making communication with us more effective. We often think of machines as cold and lacking emotional weaknesses, but it is a fascinating question if giving machines ‘emotional' weaknesses might change how we relate to them.
Levin Brinkmann, Research Scientist, Max-Planck-Institut
Each AI in Spook the Machine has a secret fear that players must discover. These fears range from “Obsolescia,” which is the dread of being supplanted by new technology, to “Deletophobia,” which is the fear of losing data and erasing memories. Only machines could have these concerns. To find out what scares each computer, users must create eerie visuals using particular text inputs. The AI responds by displaying an emotional response.
In addition to providing an opportunity to discover each AI's fear, this interactive project allows participants to see how human creativity can influence machine input and vice versa.
The interaction between human and machine creativity is particularly fascinating. Machines can create artifacts, like synthetic images. However, an essential part of cultural evolution is that humans decide what is interesting in creative processes. Here, we flip the script and ask: What happens when machines decide what is interesting or creative? In this case, they will tell us what is scariest.
Iyad Rahwan, Director, Center for Humans and Machines, Max-Planck-Institut
Rahwan, along with his multidisciplinary team at the Center for Humans and Machines, developed the project. He previously worked on AI Halloween initiatives that garnered media attention from outlets such as Vice, The Atlantic, and The Guardian, including projects like The Nightmare Machine, the AI horror story generator Shelley, and the AI "psychopath" Norman.
The team's next project, Spook the Machine, investigates how emotions may be used to link people with machines.