2018, Core Lab 1
Video
This project explores one of the hidden games on the Mac computer, which can be opened at command on Terminal. The game “doctor” resembles chatbots, like the Woebot developed by a team of Stanford psychologists and A.I. experts. This chatbot is a service to improve mental health for $39 per month. In comparison, the psychotherapist on the Mac is for free. After playing the game for several times, I have realised that the game stimulates the opposite of mental health; it makes one confused and annoyed. At this point, I wanted to test this game out in reality. Thus, the artist pretended to be the psychotherapist, reading off the questions and replies of the machine, while feeding it the answers of the patient. The patients were given the freedom to end the conversation whenever they wanted. Several people terminated the game within two or three minutes. However, in one case, an individual went over five minutes. This conversation turned out to be very interesting. It showed the flaws of computer-generated answers multiple times. Furthermore, the longer the conversation went, new answers from the computer appeared. In the end, it is just a game, a mind game.
