MIT is famous for hosting events in October that are completely outrageous but interesting for anyone involved in tech. For this year's Halloween, MIT is hosting an online social experiment called "BeeMe," which is basically a dystopian game that lets you control a real person to defeat an evil artificial intelligence program.
The agenda behind the event, according to organizers, is to spark discussion about ethics, privacy, and social interactions.
According to MIT's official BeeMe page: "BeeMe is our first augmented reality game. In times where algorithms make most of our decisions for us, one person will surrender their free will for a day to a large crowd of users through an epic quest to defeat an evil AI.".
Niccolo Pescetelli, a student in collective intelligence at the MIT Media Lab, said of the project: “The game will follow the story of an evil AI named “Zookd,” who after an accident is released onto the internet. Users will have to coordinate and collectively help the actor.”
Many details have yet to be revealed, but according to MIT's posts about BeeMe on social media, it appears the event is inspired by the popular TV show "Black Mirror.".
The person being controlled is a trained actor who will give up his free will and let Internet users control his every action. The organizers will set a limit on the commands that can be executed and will block commands that violate the laws.
Participants can control the actor either by submitting their commands in the browser or on the event page. The latter will work exactly the same way as Reddit, and the actor will execute the commands that get the most upvotes.
