A hundred years ago, the word “robot” appeared in a play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek, which tells the story of workers in artificial factories created to serve people. Now, in a metanarrative twist, AI has written the play itself.
“It’s kind of a futuristic little prince,” explains playwright David Kosnyak, who oversaw the script. As in the classic French children’s book, the 60-minute production tells the story of the journey of a character (this time a robot). He goes out into the world to learn about society, human emotions, and even death. The play itself is called “AI: When a Robot Writes a Play.”
The script was created by the widely available artificial intelligence (AI) system GPT-2. Created by Elon Musk’s OpenAI, this “robot” is a computer model designed to generate text by filtering out the vast storage of information available on the Internet.
Until now, this technology has been used to write fake news stories, stories and poems. The play is the first theatrical production of GPT-2, the group says.
