Civic Imagination is the act of imagining alternative end products of the future. Within itself, The Amazing Digital Circus, created, written and directed by Gooseworx, does exactly that. Following the emotionally charged story of our 6 main characters; Pomni, Jax, Ragatha, Gangle, Zooble and Kinger, we join their adventures they endure curated by a rogue Artificial Intelligence by the name of Caine (and his friendly Bubble buddy).
There are a lot of things that we could talk about that resemble Civic Imagination in this show, one main point I would like to point out are the implementation of corporations utilizing AI and a computer program’s ability to understand, obtain meaning and project empathy and understanding of human emotions.
Our main “antagonist” of the story, Caine or The “Ringmaster”, isn’t necessarily an antagonist but rather an Artificially Intellectual computer program that had been scrapped by the main company “C&A” in replace of a new one. Caine, as we learn, combined with the other intelligence that was being designed and seemingly went rogue, creating his own program post the bankruptcy of C&A. Caine goes through complex character development, stuck constantly between what looks like an insecure and frightened child and a narcissist who only wants to fulfill his duty as a program. He corrupts eventually, letting the altered version of himself take over (which was the secondary program he enveloped), and becomes aggressive towards our characters. Kinger, who we learn created Caine as well as the secondary program, deletes him accidentally and sends Caine into the void where he becomes self aware. Alone, he tears himself away from his need to be a “program” to try and reconcile with his circus, releasing the other program into the void of nothing-ness. He creates a connection with the characters, sharing who they truly are in the outside world where they are more than just ones and zeros. While the ending is sweet, I think there is an important lesson to learn about AI programs and how we, as humans, have become almost reliant on emotionally leaning on them.
For instance, programs designed to be your “friend” or use for therapy, computers do not feel human emotions. There was actually one episode in the series that reference what is known as ‘The Chinese Room’, a thought experiment by philosopher John Searle who wanted to test the durability of “strong AI”. The test put forth that humans have the ability to understand stories while trying to decipher meaning from unknown text/language, while computer programs only understand symbols without actually taking anything from it. We notice in this particular scene, the room itself is mentioned to curate ideas for a new adventure, sliding characters and words under a door to a room that outputs returning Chinese language. Caine grazes the letters, laughing to himself and when Zooble asks what it said, he replies that he “can’t understand Chinese.”
Conclusion being, campaigns for healthcare that utilize AI as a main health function, mental or physical, should be used with caution. It’s nice to play pretend and have a happy ending in a circus of digital characters but there are plenty of social and economic concerns. Relying on machines to formulate human emotions or obtain the ability to create a genuine connection isn’t the same as them coding and filing away information to use for later. It is still rocky on the road for studying a program’s ability to “feel”. They can be taught, not actually feel the complexities.