Understanding status changed how I fundamentally view interactions. I've wanted to submit (or even write) something on this for HN, but I haven't figured an angle to do it from.
Yes, it seems like improv, is really good at emphasizing and making explicit human interactions. This might be applicable to AI agent research and design.
If you do your write-up, I will gladly read!
But seriously, depending on what you mean by AI (general or narrow), you're right. If it was interacting in a realistic social way with humans, it'd have to understand "status".
Actually, I know of some people working on AGI that are aware of the "status" concept. Although they seem to conflate the improv meaning with general social status. On Less Wrong.com they talk about it from time to time.
Improv basically teaches you to be relentlessly prosocial. You learn what an interesting social interaction (or scene) looks like. You learn conversation and organization skills; how to lead, how to follow, how to work on teams, how to speak. It's all roleplaying.
Actually, you learn the gist of what they would teach your in the "seduction community". Those are more specialized skills. But there's no social stigma attached. And that's not a knock on them either.
One of the more clever and disturbing ways to gain 'power' over an individual is to play the student in the master-student role. E.g. by having them teach you something - which is doing you a favor, you can gain their favor.
Ben Franklin: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=145544
For example, if someone is trying to sell you something you can have him/her be the expert and they may give you a better deal.
Roleplaying as a "student" is playing a low status role, to the high status role of "teacher". In that instance you get what you want by playing low. But in another situation you might play high (for another to play low) to get what you want. You could bark orders at someone, and if they follow through they played low to your high. Of course, if this was a serious and non-consensual interaction it'd wear on the players after a while. Improv, since it's fundamentally about roleplaying, parallels BDSM.
Having a boss who was too serious about his high status role would suck, for instance. The fun ones are the ones who joke about their role.
Has anyone used "status transformations" to their advantage in a real-world transaction? (haggling over the price of a car, for example). Personally, I don't think I could really alter my innate behaviour to achieve any sort of social advantage, but in the end this sort of information was useful for me to reflect on my interactions with others in my life.
I have a bunch of web resources (on improv) pertaining to status transactions. Feel free to email me, everyone.
(So did I just raise your status?)
Also, it's interesting to read (HN) headlines with status transactions in mind. When reading a headline ask yourself, who got lowered? Who was raised? Take Microsoft takes a loss to Firefox The obvious thing is FF>MS, but who else is lowered or raised?
So here's an example of a conversation analyzed by Keith Johnstone's who basically the father of improv: http://www.thestage.co.uk/connect/acblack/improkj.php
I would submitted this a while ago, but it'd be hard to make clear what my intention for doing that was.