The Computer is Your Redacted is a terrifying and ridiculous audio play where you can listen as four experts in artificial intelligence, technology, and culture play the classic role-playing game Paranoia! and navigate a horrible and occasionally hilarious dystopia. What happens when a business leader, an artist, an ethicist, and an academic come together to explore artificial intelligence through a role-playing game that embodies our collective anxieties about an automated future?

As part of the Goethe-Institut Toronto’s Algorithmic Culture programming, we created a rather unusual podcast. We brought together four brilliant individuals connected to AI and its ethics/policy implications to be take part in an audio series/podcast. The format was not a traditional one, however. Rather, we invited them to play. Specifically, to play a tabletop role-playing game, a slightly modified version of the 1980s classic Paranoia!. We were seeking a fun and playful way to surface themes around AI while bypassing the polarized positions so often present in these discussions.

What resulted was absurd and revealing.