Every September, Dublin transforms into a playground for the bold, the experimental, and the unexpected. The Dublin Fringe Festival—Ireland’s leading showcase for new and daring performances. Under the tagline Be Brave. Be Wild. Be Bold. Be Here. The festival presents 85 events this year, featuring 492 performances across 36 venues scattered throughout the city. Since its founding in 1995, the festival has been a launchpad for emerging artists and a playground for established names to push their craft into uncharted territory. Theatre, dance, music, comedy, live art, circus—anything is possible here, and audiences are invited to dive in headfirst.

I had the opportunity to interview Joshua and Tishé, the writers of The Deadline Project. The piece brings a reflection on grief and human preservation. On stage, the characters have philosophical conversations with an AI model. What’s being called by the writers “soft sci-fi, folk musical” is a deep reflection on existentialism.

So, let’s start with some questions. If you guys want to talk a little bit about the project and what’s involved?

Tishé: Yeah. I guess I can talk a bit about how we started this. Josh and I met in university, and Josh always had this concept album he wrote—I believe in 2020—and it had a whole world attached to it.

We gave it a go while we were still in university, and honestly, it wasn’t great. We didn’t get what we wanted out of it. But the wonderful thing about art is that you get to fail, especially when you’re in university and the stakes are low—even though they don’t feel low at the time. You get the chance to play, to explore what doesn’t work, so you can really focus on what does work the second time around.

So we went into writing this project again seriously in January, and this time we knew what would work. We’re all sort of living in this “tech hellscape.” That’s how it feels—tech encroaching on every part of our lives. And while it’s everywhere, it can’t save us from ourselves. If anything, it exacerbates all the issues we already have. It makes capitalism more potent. It makes racism more obvious.

So, we had this idea: the world is ending, and tech can’t save you. In fact, it’s causing it. And not only that—people are still trying to capitalize on the end of your life.

That’s very deep. Unfortunately, it is very true. I was actually talking about this with a friend—we were saying that now people are more worried about the problems technology can bring. Because now it can generate ideas and content. Before, we weren’t so worried, because we thought we were the main source of creativity.

Tishé: Absolutely. And to be clear, our position is that AI isn’t doing it in a fair way. Especially as artists, we feel that AI doesn’t really create anything. It’s a learning model. It takes things other people have made and, for better or worse, rips them off.

Art has to be about the soul. If there’s no soul—if it’s just a machine—then what is that art? What does it mean? That’s our statement.

Joshua: Just to add to what Tishé said—you have that famous paper published a couple years ago about “stochastic parrots” and how AI functions as an LLM, just speaking about LLMs. And then—I don’t think it was Peter Thiel, but someone else senior—was just like, “Ah, we’re all stochastic parrots anyway. That’s what it is to be human. There’s no difference between an LLM recreating something and us recreating something.”

I think a lot of people might come back and go, “Sure, artists just watch a bunch of art, and then they compile influences together and produce something.” But that’s assuming that the product is the most important thing. When it’s not. It’s the process.

And by definition, the AI does not go through a process. It doesn’t sit there with its bunch of influences and go, “This is shit. I’m never gonna get anywhere, and I fucking suck.” And then, “Oh, I’m a genius, I did it, I sorted it out.” It doesn’t have any of that. And that is the most important part.

It’s harder and harder even as artists to recognize that, because we want this play to do well. We want it to sell well. We want it to be good, and we’ll be pissed if it’s not good. But inherently, it will still have more value because there’s a thinking process behind it.

Yeah. I like the way you said that—that what matters is the process, not the product. So in this regard, I know you guys said a lot now about how you feel about AI. But how did the process come about? What was the main thing that got you thinking, “Okay, let’s use AI in this play, and this is going to explain to the audience why”?

Joshua: Yeah. I think I initially had the songs and the idea. It was more this sense of: could you take someone who, as an artist, is against this stuff—like our characters, who are musicians and artists—and push them so far, in a world that’s failing in every way, that they’d essentially commit the biggest “sin” you could do as an artist?

And can we empathize with them in that? To understand that? I don’t think it’s a show that punches down or calls people stupid. It exaggerates why people use AI. But it’s like the same reason people might use ChatGPT to look up a simple fact they could just Google. It’s apathy towards process or curiosity.

Also, more and more people are starting relationships with these tools. And what sort of gap is that filling, as people feel increasingly disconnected and lonely?

Tishé: In the world of our play, the idea is that the world is ending, and a tech company called Silver Linings has created an AI system called Beyond for people to be remembered. But it's a tiered system. Entry-level: you upload yourself, and if there’s a world after this, people will know you existed. Next paid level: You can have a replica of yourself in this world.

Do you think AI will replace writers?

Joshua: I don’t think AI writing will work long-term. Writing is about honesty. The best things I’ve read are based on lived experience, and AI can’t experience hardship. So maybe it can be technically good, but it lacks soul. And without a soul, it can’t be that good.

Tishé: I think it comes from this idea that AI, being ones and zeros, must be more efficient than me. “I should trust an AI trainer over a human.” And so far, that’s not true. It makes things up. It lies constantly.

And with a human, you can ask questions, and you can see their process. With AI, people just trust it blindly.

In terms of making books or films written by AI—same as Tisha—why would you do that? Why go through the effort of making something without having the process yourself? The process is the most important part.

If there aren’t regulations, we’ll start seeing organic art priced higher—becoming a hipster, elitist thing. Like, “I bought a movie made by real people.” And then culture wars will shift to, “Oh, these hipsters are watching movies made by people? Can’t you just enjoy your AI Spider-Man?”

Are you scared of AI?

Tishé: I’m scared of human beings. I’m not scared of things. I’m scared of the way human beings use things. I’m not scared of AI. If we wanted to pull the plug on it tomorrow, we could. My issue with all tech is the way people use it. It’s not the thing in itself. I cannot fear a thing that is numbers and code.

Alright. And you, Joshua?

Joshua: I’m a teacher as well. I see kids not trusting themselves, but they trust the AI much more. They’ll go to it for the smallest things, but what gets me is that this is the way we prioritize building.

We didn’t design AI to, say, eliminate retail jobs that people don’t want and provide a universal basic income. Instead, we’re replacing countless coders and programmers; people are losing their jobs constantly, yet no one’s quality of life is improving as a result.

Why was the first thing they made it do… art? I think it’s because they saw it as the last frontier for AI. Even though most artists don’t make much money—except maybe at the Hollywood level—a studio executive might see it as worth replacing highly paid writers with AI to cut costs.

I think it comes back to that perfect tweet—and I don’t know who it was by—but it was this idea of: I would love AI to fold my laundry and do my dishes so I have time to do my art. I don’t want AI to do my art while I do the dishes. You know? And it’s that thing of—perhaps, if its use actually made people’s lives better, then fine. But I don’t think it does.

Let’s get back to the play:-How’s the interaction of the AI and the character?

Joshua: So in the play, the AI system is being used to ask them questions about themselves to better understand who they are. We don’t quite tell you what the questions are, but if they get too off-topic, the AI system speaks up just to bring them back, because it wants a specific answer to a specific question. So that’s the way it interacts. It’s more the idea of: this is what you use to upload yourself, and this is what you use to record who you are. So that this AI system can learn about you for replication or remembrance, whichever you decide.

So AI is a character too?

Tishé: The AI is just a box that lights up. That is it. We have no real interest in characterizing AI. The AI has no conscience. It’s not a thing; it’s a machine. And even in doing that, I think it's important in a world where people are having romantic relationships with machines. And it’s the idea of: this is what this is; let’s not lie to ourselves. It’s not a therapist.

They speak to it very deeply and emotively, but that’s more because of the types of questions it’s asking. If I asked you to describe all of your hopes and dreams since you were a child, you too would start telling me very deep things about your life. So it’s more about that than the AI itself.

Joshua: I think it also, as a result, comes off as like a god in some ways. Like, the scenes feel like prayers when people are talking to it, and it never responds back. It’s an apathetic, hollow god. In that way, it does feel like it’s watching the whole show, but you don’t get a sense of it.