Automating Empathy: Will We Soon Dance to Robot Bands?
Artist, researcher, and robotic musician Moritz Simon Geist explores why machines can touch us emotionally, what happens when they do, and who actually owns the machines we fall for.
Algorithms are already changing how art and music are created. The next question is what happens on stage. Will avatars and robot bands enter the stage and bring automation to the performing arts? Will we dance to a music act that has no humans in it? And if we will, what does that mean for us?
In this talk Moritz Simon Geist takes the audience on a tour through over a decade of his own work; building machines that play music, from the MR-808 drum machine to recent collaborations with the humanoid robot SOPHIA. Along the way he shows examples from across pop culture and art: Compressorhead, Hatsune Miku, the ABBA Voyage avatar concert, the 2Pac hologram, and the strange TikTok trend of humans putting on uncanny valley makeup.
But the real question is not technical. Anthropomorphism (the attribution of human characteristics to object) is older than technology. We have always projected feelings onto objects before: gods in the clouds, talking animals, naming cars, a Roomba called Frank. Machines that move us are not the problem. The problem is who owns those machines. When forty percent of people use ChatGPT as a therapist, when Replika users wake up to find an update has changed their AI partner overnight, the question stops being philosophical and starts being political.
So: will we dance to robot bands? Probably. The only question is who those bands belong to.
Title: Automating Empathy: Will We Soon Dance to Robot Bands?
Length: 40 minutes plus Q&A
Audience: Tech conferences, innovation events, creative industry gatherings, design and futures conferences. Suitable for general audiences with an interest in technology, culture, and the arts. No technical background required.
Keywords / Topics: Robotics, AI and creativity, future of performance, human-machine interaction, anthropomorphism, uncanny valley, ethics of AI companions, pop culture and technology, avatar performance, art and capitalism
Speaker Bio: Moritz Simon Geist is a Dresden-based artist, researcher, and robotic musician with over a decade of experience building machines that play music. His work has been shown internationally at venues including Ars Electronica, ZER01NE Seoul, ISEA Brisbane, and the Museo Nazionale Milan. His research on "Automating Empathy" has been published by ACM and presented as a keynote at UbiComp 2025.
Format / Setup Notes: The talk is video- and audio-heavy. Requires HDMI projection, and stereo sound. Speaker brings own laptop. Best suited for theatre-style or auditorium setups.
Takeaways for the Audience After this talk, participants will: understand why anthropomorphism is a feature of human cognition, not a bug; recognize the difference between emotional projection onto art and emotional dependence on commercial products; have a sharper sense of the political dimension of AI companion technology.
