Probably not. But they might steal your job. That’s what I’ve surmised after speaking with our guests for this episode. The game we’re talking about is classic first-person puzzler Portal, in which a crazed A.I called GLaDOS puts you through increasingly dangerous tests. To find out if the robo-apocalypse is even a remote possibility, I spoke to A.I. researcher and builder of artificial intelligences Michael Cook. His coded creatures are mostly harmless, unlike the A.I of popular media who always speak with a vaguely threatening air. But why do they talk like that? Enter stage left, special guest number two: it’s actor Sarah Elmaleh! Sarah has done the voice of a few A.I characters in games like Halo Infinite and Exapunks. She tells us exactly what it is that makes a voice sound authentically robotic. Because if bots can pretend to be people, why not the other way around?
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Links:
Here’s some of Sarah’s voice work in Halo Infinite
Here’s his game designing AI, called Puck
Interview music is:
Magic Scout Cottages by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4672-magic-scout-cottages
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Intro music is Still Alive composed by Jonathan Coulton, performed by Ellen McLain, from the game Portal
All SFX and voice clips are from Portal by Valve
