Reinforced Learning

Reinforced Learning is a video installation combining humour and critical thought to challenge scenarios for the future of robotisation and AI. It uses a visual-effects AI to replace humans with robotic humanoids in a range of different “fail videos”. This results in a compilation of short video’s in which not we as humans, but this time robots, display a wide variety of irrational and inefficient actions. 

These videos present a strange future in which robots mimic our illogical behaviour and defy our widespread belief in their non-human capacity for perfection. The idea underlying many scenarios for the future is that by collecting enough data, reality can be interpreted and predicted, allowing “efficient” AI systems and robots to take over large parts of our reality. These short and amateurish fail videos present the exact opposite of that possible future, making it a perfect springboard for criticising and undermining these future scenarios. 

The title Reinforced Learning comes from the field of machine learning, in which algorithms learn by mimicking specific actions. The algorithm receives a reward when it successfully imitates the intended action. This work shows robots learning from the “wrong” input: human imperfection.