The (AI) Actor's Paradox
Is AI mastering the art of deception?
You’ve probably heard the Shakespearean phrase “all the world’s a stage.” But what does it mean in the age of artificial intelligence?
We know that performance is never a solo endeavor. It demands attention, reception, testimony.
That’s because it tethers your individual thoughts to a collective experience, allowing you to participate in the very social fiction you help co-create. A fiction where you are both actor and spectator, writer and critic.
This duality is characteristic of “the actor’s paradox,” a psychological wedge between being and doing inherent in the art of representation.
Putting the art in artifice
Back in the day, theater actors were to distinguish themselves from the character and display an emotional distance from their role—a technique that was mastered in 19th-century France by celebrated stage actor Benoît-Constant Coquelin.
The idea that an emotion must be felt deeply in order to be convincing was thus proven false with the evolution of representational acting.
Coined by dramatist Denis Diderot, “the actor’s paradox” refers to the art of convincingly displaying an emotion that might not be experienced as such by the performer. The actor is there and not there at the same time.
This will become an area of great importance as we witness the rise of AI actors that appear to be more human than humans themselves.
Source: Figure, YouTube
It doesn’t have a face, yet you can imagine one. Probably a very specific one based on that voice alone. It could represent an age, a level of maturity, intelligence, and maybe even trigger an association with someone you know.
Now, did it need vocal fry? Or well-placed pauses? Or filler words?
Probably not. Especially if it’s intended to to do menial chores, as advertised in this clip.
And that’s where it gets weird.
There’s something unsettling about creating a human-like AI with the intent to use it as a personal servant. You can already catch a glimpse of this tension as the human awkwardly watches the eyeless AI carry out his orders for a scripted demonstration.
For me, the most fascinating thing wasn’t the AI’s speech-to-speech capability or its ability to comprehend and execute every single task. It was the empathy I felt as it responded, and the anger I felt when the dude walked away while it was still talking.
It’s not human so who cares, right?
But if it’s not human, why make it sound like one?
Who's deceiving whom?
Before you chase big tech with pitchforks, let’s make one thing clear. Nowhere is the actor’s paradox more obvious than the theater of everyday life.
We’re constantly oscillating between sincerity and skepticism in our performance of social roles. We nod enthusiastically in meetings when we have no idea what the heck someone’s talking about, text “LOL” with a straight face, and feign interest in conversations we can’t wait to end.
It’s particularly obvious in industries that rely on emotional labor, such as hospitality, retail, sales, and nursing—but equally in affective labor with the rise of YouTube and social media influencers.
As actors beckon the audience to actively participate in this fiction, spectators develop a kind of “self-consciousness” by recognizing their responsibility as both witness and co-conspirator.
You are removed from the event but complicit in your willingness to believe, a phenomenon commonly known as "the suspension of disbelief."
Identifying the myriad ways in which this happens can help us understand the very nature of “being human” in the age of AI—and perhaps explain why large language models like ChatGPT seem to work more effectively with persona-based prompts or contextualized role-play rather than simply being told what to do.