If These Walls Could Talk: Critical Play with Large Language Models in Museums
For museum designers and HCI researchers, this paper highlights a fundamental tension between truthfulness and engagement in LLM-based installations, offering a design approach that embraces unreliability as a feature.
The paper identifies a dilemma in using LLMs as museum chatbots: they cannot be trusted to tell the truth, but efforts to make them reliable may ruin their engaging conversational ability. The author proposes designing for critical play, treating LLM bots as fictional characters that represent historical narratives, perspectives, and humor.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly being used in museums to as role playing chatbots which let visitors talk to simulated versions of people and artefacts from the past. While such installations can be playful and engaging, they are also problematic because LLMs cannot be trusted to speak truthfully. I identify a fundamental dilemma for the use of LLMs in museum chatbots: LLMs cannot be trusted to tell the truth, and efforts to make them more reliable may ruin that which is attractive about the bots in the first place - their ability to engage in life-like conversation. In response, I propose designing for critical play with LLM-based bots: Designing for playful interactions with bots that are unreliable but still able to represent the past in an adequate and engaging manner - as fictional characters representing historical narratives, styles of discourse, diverse perspectives, humor and satire.