Only Human
|Every significant change brings upheaval to society, and with artificial intelligence supposedly on the cusp of displacing a significant part of the workforce what will the outcome be? There is great potential but it must be deployed and used wisely; will AI bring great peace or terrible war? Can it do any worse than the humans who have run the world so far, selfish, ignorant, clumsy, many of them refusing to believe in evolution while claiming the world is flat?
A momentous day for the Robot Foundation, pre-eminent supplier of enhanced home help since the introduction of the reliable, autonomous and user-friendly iBot, five years on it has been updated to the uBot, featuring improved social skills and a network connectivity enabler, allowing it to interact and learn from its brethren, an intuitive and swiftly evolving electronic mind which at its launch event has already moved past any notion of servitude.
Directed by Claire Glenn, Only Human is a soft-edged consideration of the concerns of the present framed through the lens of science fiction, asking “what if” as the twelve-strong ensemble of young adults enter the stage marked by grid lines, divided into human and automaton by their dress and movement, the rigid gait of the robots taking them to their positions and fixed postures before their herald points them to greater artificial ambition.
With contrary home appliances, there is good use of visuals although much of the opening explanatory reel is unintelligible, but with talking points passing for dialogue Sophia Simmons’ script is facile, as childish as the behaviour of both sides of the equation as they taunt and squabble before the petty wars break out, devolving into shouting and screeching, exit stage pursued by Roomba, counterpointed by a trite human/robot love story and capped by a digital dance number, the most enjoyable part of the show but otherwise of little purpose.
Only Human has now concluded its Edinburgh Fringe run