I’ve Always Been Jealous of Other People’s Families

Every night, families gather for dinner surrounded by the invisible presence of intelligent machines. Through cameras, microphones and voice recognition software, these devices are silently witnessing our emotional states and daily lives. As we welcome more and more technology into our lives, our day-to-day routines become datasets, training and shaping the common sense in those who only know digital loneliness.

In I’ve Always Been Jealous of Other People’s Families, Shirin Anlen turns the tables and investigates the mental states of the intelligent machines we create. For this machine learning installation, she has teamed up with producer Arnaud Colinart (Notes on Blindness VR) and the National Film Board of Canada. Together they invite the audience to sit down at a dinner table and act like a family. What do these moments trigger in an AI? How does the AI feel about the most mundane and intimate moments of human life? Ordinary rituals affect our own state of mind—do they affect the learning process of the intelligent machines we create in the same way?