Advice from Strangers
Advice is "a form of relating personal or institutional opinions, belief systems, values, recommendations or guidance about certain situations relayed in some context to another person, group or party often offered as a guide to action and/or conduct." It's common to ask a friend or family member for advice, but would you ask a stranger?
I indirectly solicited advice from strangers by having conversations with artificial intelligence chat bots. Bots that have the ability to learn from conversations with humans are widely available on the internet. What they say in any given conversation is basically a result of what has been previously said to them or stock responses that they were provided with. This sometimes results in nonsensical, irrelevant answers, and at other times answers that are eerily human-like. It can be easy for users to get sucked into the realistic conversational experience and forget that they're chatting with a bot.
I chatted with several bots, asking each of them for advice. Advice is based on life experience, something which bots do not have. They can only speak of what they have learned from previous users. At some point, these bots had conversations in which the users offered advice. That advice was then passed along to me when I asked for it. What is the nature of the advice I was given? Who gives advice to robots, and why? Is it someone's personal words to live by? Is it supposed to be funny? I'm not sure about the initial intent upon which this advice was given, but I will take it and continue to pass it along.
To continue the cycle of advice shared between strangers, I created a set of cards printed with the words relayed to me by the bots. The cards can be given out, left behind, hidden, etc. to be shared with the next stranger.
This project was partially inspired by Talk to Me, an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, and the Radiolab episode Talking to Machines.