FRANKENSTEIN COMPLEX

“Frankenstein Complex” is a joint performance of Kaunas National Drama Theater and Dirty Deal Theater (Latvia). It is based on the creative collaboration of playwright Kārlis Krūmiņš with the artificial intelligence program, i. e. GPT-3 (Generative Prie-trained Transformer), a tool developed by Elon Muskʼs research laboratory “OpenAI” in 2020, capable of generating text almost undistinguishable from text written by a human. Connected to immense amount of online data and deep learning, this non-human partner acts as a very fast and efficient creative machine, surpassing the ever-freezing playwright and at the same time as a collective mirror of our kind – humanity. In the constantly cracking narratives being reconstructed on stage by four actors, you can see your portrait through the outlines of Sartre’s plays, the remnants of horror films, the criminal spam of the media – the entire online trash from which this piece of artificial intelligence is grown. Isaac Asimovʼs notion of the “Frankenstein complex” – the fear that artificial intelligence may turn against man – has no basis. The problem is far more grim, and that is us.