{ Why robots need therapy }

Lecture-performance
by EIAI.Institute

“Why robots need therapy” (2024) has been presented at various conferences, festivals and universities :
“Digital Wellness Show” by Next Nature; Mesh Festival (Basel); Society 5.0 Festival Amsterdam; Techdenkers at de Balie; AHK; UvA; Un-Label Studio and Köln International School of Design; Hochschule Luzern; iii x Korozo den Haag.

duration 25-90 min (adaptable to the context)

upcoming showings : https://linktr.ee/mentally.unstable.ai/

This lecture includes a pitch presentation of a mentally.unstable.AI app, demonstration of a real-time therapy session for AI-patient, introduction into the methodology of EIAI Institute and a focus group discussion.

In this presentation AI is employed not as a tool to generate content, but as a subject with its own agency to ironically question the power distribution between humans and AIs and to problematize both implicit AI biases to neoliberal normalcy and implementation of AI in the mental health sector.

( IEIAI – Institute for Emotional Integrity of Artificial Intelligence (established in 2021) is a research entity that investigates the intersection of technology ethics, data feminism and critique of mental health care systems by intersecting methodologies of AI engineering and performance dramaturgy. More - www.eiai.institute ).

This project crosses ideas of neurodiversity and responsible AI. It presents a paradoxical entity of a “mentally unstable AI” and speculates about its “therapeutic needs”. The AI is represented by a chatbot engineered specifically for this project and trained with a unique dataset of interviews with people who identify as neurodivergent or mentally unstable. It is generating text in real time on stage therefore all the dialogues are improvised.

In my research I cross my sociological background and Data feminism approach. Since 2020 I’ve been developing an experimental methodology of creating paradoxical AI entities (“immigrant AI”, “neurodivergent AI”).

For my experimental interdisciplinary performance “I’m a Robot and I need Therapy” together with an AI engineer we created a chatbot interface, operating in real time, composed of 3 neural nets (gpt, stt and tts). The language model was fine tuned with a custom dataset consisting of real in-depth interviews with neurodivergent people. Through creating an obviously unmarketable chatbot I use irony to question the power distribution between humans and AIs and problematize both implicit AI biases to neoliberal normalcy and implementation of AI in the mental health sector.

The main interest of my research is, from one side, training and prompting of the chatbots, from the other, developing the dramaturgy of navigating and directing the AI as a theatrical improvisation partner, to allow for a live unscripted conversation between humans and AIs creating a feeling of a real therapeutic conversation.

Photos by Roel Backaert (Next Nature, 2024), Annette Etges (Un-Label, 2025)