#1541: Virtual Being Engages in Socratic Monologue Comparing AI to Sugar in “Sweet!” Installation

Another AI-based project at SXSW this year was SWEET! by Dutch designer and artist René van Engelenburg of DROPSTUFF MEDIA. This is a projection-mapped physical installation designed to facilitate a very brief conversation with an OpenAI LLM-driven virtual being about the parallels between how sugar is added to all of our food and how AI is currently being added to all of our technologies. The virtual being uses a sort of Socratic method of questioning to solicit your opinion in four leading questions that are making an argument about the commonalities between sugar and AI. It's a short five-minute experience, and so I did the piece three different times to understand the underlying mechanics of how it's built. It never felt like a true conversation as there's a superficial acknowledgement of my responses, but always immediately progresses onto the pre-set monologue that is pre-written within the series of prompts without having what I see seemingly impact the substance of the conversation beyond some prompted images that are projected onto the white set of a candy store. So instead of a truly, open-ended Socratic dialogue, this experience feels more like a Socratic monologue where questions are only driving a superficial sentiment analysis before moving onto the delivery of the next random fact or story beat. We still have a long way to go before these LLM-based experiences can balance a convincing conversation while also telling a compelling story, but this feels like the type of XR immersive installation providing a holographic embodiment of the virtual being is a compelling form factor that I can see being further developed in the future. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality