metaLAB People: Nikhil Dharmaraj, Summer Intern
Nikhil Dharmaraj is a rising senior … in high school! He wanted to work as an intern at metaLAB this summer because he’s interested in using interactive art to express technological ideas — and what better place is there for that?
Nikhil has mostly worked with metaLAB’s Creative Researcher Sarah Newman on her project “Moral Labyrinth.” This art project, which was exhibited as an installation in Berlin earlier this year, asks ethical questions about the use of Artificial Intelligence. Before coming to metaLAB, Nikhil didn’t know much about AI ethics or the issue of value alignment, but he now sees these are crucial factors of the conversation. With previous programming experience, he has been “creating the digital space of the labyrinth,” and has been surprised at the amount of creative license he’s been given during his internship. (Nikhil will also be joining Newman when she exhibits their summer work at the Ars Electronica Festival in Austria this September.)
Nikhil has also worked with Creative Researcher Jonathan Sun on his project “Laughing Room.” Sun has designed an algorithmic “sitcom room” connected to neural networks. A user enters the room and tells jokes. If the computer determines that what someone said was funny, it will play a laugh track. Nikhil says this project opens up questions about privacy, as it echoes concerns about Amazon’s Alexa listening for key words in our conversations, and also addresses the inequality inherent in humor. The project also probes deeper into the future of the relationship between AI and humans, as it shows humans performing for technology, rather than the other way around. (“Laughing Room” will be exhibited at Cambridge Public Library and MIT’s Hayden Library this fall.)
In general, Nikhil has come to two conclusions while working at metaLAB. The first that art is equally as important as analysis in raising issues about technology. And the second is that Harvard is his top choice of colleges, since it offers such interdisciplinary spaces to explore thought.
