About Misbehaving Machines

The AI in the library project aims to develop innovative AI literacy programmes for Australian librarians and library clients to understand the benefits and risks of using popular generative AI applications such as ChatGPT to discover accurate information about the world. The first output of the project was The Making of Misbehaving Machines exhibit. This exhibit demonstrates a chatbot that answers questions in unexpected ways. The group built the chatbot by developing a dataset of questions - from quotidian to unanswerable - and a set of prompts ranked according to their level of misbehaviour. Visitors could learn about how the chatbot was made through three simple steps. They could also ask what question they would like to ask of the misbehaving machines and to rate its answerability and absurdity.

The Making of Misbehaving Machines was exhibited at Green Square, Parramatta City, TAFE NSW Ultimo and UTS libraries in November 2024. Plans are afoot to update the materials for further exhibits in 2025 and to publish the materials we used for the collaborative development of the exhibit with librarians.

The AI in the Library project is a collaboration between researchers from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), the New South Wales Public Libraries Association (NSWPLA), the State Library of NSW and pilot libraries from Greater Sydney (Parramatta City Libraries, Sydney City Libraries, TAFE NSW and UTS).

Pilot Funding in 2024 was from the University of Technology Sydney.

Find out more about what and why here...

And find out what questions you have been asking the machines here...

Ask a Question

What question would you like to ask the Misbehaving Machines?

click here to ask

Making our datasets

Find out how we made our first datasets for the Misbehaving Machines

find out how!

Group Members

Dr Heather Ford

is an ARC Fellow and Associate Professor in the School of Communications.

Dr Bhuva Narayan

is Associate Professor, Digital Social Media in the School of Communication.

Dr Suneel Jethani

is a Senior Lecturer in Digital and Social Media in the School of Communication.

Dr Andrew Burrell

is a senior lecturer is Visual Communication, School of Design

Dr Monica Monin

is a lecturer is Visual Communication, School of Design

Research and Co-Design Participants



ALIA
Trish Hepworth

City of Sydney Libraries
Heather Davis
Fiona Ni
David Dolan
Kathryn Joss

TAFE NSW
Emma Stockburn
Naomi Burns
Heidi Wills
Anna Sin

City of Parramatta Libraries
Emma Stockburn
Nisa Alam

UTS Library
Nicole Aradas
Kimberley Porteous
Alycia Bailey
Ashley England
Emma Slee

State Library of NSW
Abby Dawson



Our Institutional Partners




New South Wales Public Libraries Association





Our Participating Libraries






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