Artificial intelligence leads to real comedy for PhD student

When Kory Mathewson began his PhD in computing science at the University of Alberta, he didn't think it would lead to doing improv on stage with a robot--but that's exactly what happened. Mathewson has two shows in this year's Edmonton Fringe Fest: TEDxRFT, an improv show that riffs on the popular TED Talks videos, and Human Machine, an AI improv show. "The Human Machine AI improv show is part of my PhD work. I'm studying how humans and machine-learning systems interact, and so this show is a little bit of a play on the work that I've been doing," he said. "I've been building dialogue systems, and this show explores how humans and these dialogue systems--like Siri, Alexa or Google Home--play into our lives, and the funny things they say."