Admoni, Nourbakhsh Prime for Discussion on AI

As the house lights rise in the O'Reilly Theater , actress Jill Tanner begins her performance as the titular character in the show "Marjorie Prime." She's dressed casually, and speaking to a much younger man in a full suit - a holographic representation of her late husband. He's a youthful, AI version of the man she fell in love with, designed to help her with the frustration of her decaying mind. Between two performances of the play on Sunday, June 2, Carnegie Mellon University faculty members Illah Nourbakhsh and Henny Admoni joined Director Marya Sea Kaminski at the Pittsburgh Public Theater for a panel discussion, titled "When Robots Become Our Companions: Facts, Fictions, and Uncomfortable Truths." The panel is part of a series of outreach programming made possible by the 2016 K&L Gates Endowment for Ethics and Computational Technologies. Nourbakhsh, a professor of robotics and director of CMU's CREATE Lab , hopes to continue these community outreach sessions, spurring local discourse over the ethical use of technology in culture and society. Illah Nourbakhsh "I think 'Marjorie Prime' is an interesting play on this whole issue of authenticity, the human, non-human and identity," Nourbakhsh said. "This is relevant to society because of diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia.