At the Science Gallery I argued with a robot about love and Rilke

A little-known fact about the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument, the first sampling synthesiser, introduced in 1979, is that it incorporated a psychotherapist called Liza. Stressed musicians could key in an emotional problem and Liza would begin the session with the soothing opening: ‘What is it that troubles you about x?’ She was flummoxed by a frivolous question from my husband, an early Fairlight owner, about a hole in her bucket but dealt expeditiously with my nine-year-old stepson. When he told her to get lost, she shut the system down.

The closing installation is a dismal graveyard of discarded Alexas still winking pink, blue and green

The ghost in Fast Familiar’s machine at the Science Gallery’s AI exhibition is an advanced version of Liza, and the roles are reversed. ‘You might be used to robots helping you,’ it advises visitors. ‘But this is about YOU helping ME.’ As a human (you have to pass a traffic-light test to qualify) your role is to help its artificial intelligence look for love by teaching it the basics of romance.

Not a ready learner, it is easily rattled. When I hit the ‘No that’s not true’ button in response to its boast, ‘we can use data to predict love efficiently’, it snapped back: ‘You may not be able to but I can.’ When I zero-rated its attempt to up the romance quotient in Maria Rilke’s love poem Again and Again by inserting ‘bouquets of red roses’ into the penultimate line it responded tetchily: ‘That was not what I was expecting.’ The Mike Nelson-style setting of an internet café with misspelt notices from the management and a broken electric fan is a giveaway that the intelligence at work here is artistic. The responses are too funny for a chatbot – and too clever by half.