An Artificially Intelligent Guide to Love

By Hannah Silva
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 12/02/22

Experimental drama as writer Hannah Silva collaborates with a machine-learning algorithm to create an audio guide to love.

The algorithm produces poems and stories in response to the writer’s poems and stories. It answers the writer’s questions and it asks her questions.

What is love? Is it an emotion? Is it an action? How does it work? What do we feel? What do we do?

Hannah tells the algorithm that she wants to think about love because in the past she didn’t think about it, she just fell in it.

The algorithm and the writer explore the theme of love in all its forms: parental love, romantic love, friendship and loss of love. The algorithm’s often absurdist and poetic texts frame and comment on the writer’s personal story of love and loss as a queer single mum.

“An Artificially Intelligent Guide to Love” was developed through OKRE Experimental Stories. The consultant was Dr James Carney. The script was written using texts generated by the GPT-J algorithm, a language prediction model trained and maintained by EleutherAI, a grassroots collective of researchers working to open source AI research.

Algorithm .…. Fiona Shaw
Writer ….. Yusra Warsama
Woman ….. Jane Slavin
Man ….. Neil Bell

Executive producer ….. Sara Davies
Production manager ….. Anna de Wolff Evans

Sound design ….. Adam Woodhams
Mix …… Steve Bond
Music …… Ioana Selaru
Director/producer ….. Nicolas Jackson

An Afonica production for BBC Radio 4