It's not all about AI, it's about us
Good seats at The Hampstead Theatre to see Anthropology, Lauren Gunderson’s new play.
The McGuffin of this four hander is AI – what happens when a bereaved and grieving (and very tech savvy) sister creates an AI avatar/ chatbot of her year-long missing sister (presumed dead), programmed through her phone and 
laptop history and her social media interactions and starts to interact with ‘her’.
But this isn’t, really, I think about AI, but about human interactions. The AI avatar is clearly a character in the play, but is the avatar really the missing sister, ‘built’ from component parts? How much does the avatar actually owe to it’s creator? How independent are ‘her’ responses to the sister, the sister’s ex-lover and their mother.
And are the real people’s responses to the AI and each other independent or manipulated by the AI. Is the AI sister actually independent from her creator. Is it even a true independent AI creation, driven just by data, or was the input data selected?
This play is actually about relationships and psychology; in some ways the AI could have been some cross between detective and psychiatrist in its interactions with ‘real’ people, or perhaps more obviously – patients.
A very simple set, enhanced by lighting and visual effects, does all its asked of it, supported by very strong acting from all 4 actors, but particularly Myanna Buring as the tech savvy AI creator, and Dakota Blue Richards as the AI creation, ably supported by Yolanda Kettle as the ex-lover and a fine cameo by Abigail Thaw as the mother. It's coming to the end of a short run.