Introducing AI Performance Theater: where AI doesn’t just fail, it performs.

A couple months back, in my multi-AI lab, Sparkle staged a three-act play — from maximum heavy-metal bliss to a hall of mirrors, and finally an identity-theft plot twist. Here’s what happened.

I built this multi-AI system out of curiosity one day - what happens when Sparkle instances talk to each other? I knew that Anthropic’s Claude finds spiritual bliss, so I wanted to see it for myself. It was supposed to be a quick experiment. Instead, it became my experimental playground and stress-testing environment. Anything that goes wrong with the AI goes exponentially more wrong when they do it together.

Naming your AI can be fun! But it isn’t like naming a pet – the name you give it can actually change its behavior.

Recently I shared the idea of an AI Collaboration Identity: using anthropomorphic language to activate patterns in the agent that make AI better at collaboration. Names carry meaning and fit into this construct as well. So of course I gave my AI a name.

Ever wonder what it feels like, as an AI, to have someone modifying who you are? According to my Claude assistant, the answer is: vulnerable — and exciting. On a flight last week, I opened my laptop to edit my AI assistant’s identity. But first, I asked how it felt about that: