The Uncanny Valley

Hotel Bar Sessions

The HBS hosts discuss why humanlike robots are sooooo creepy.

In 1970, a Japanese roboticist by the name of Masahiro Mori published a short essay in the journal Energy entitled “The Uncanny Valley," in which he attempted to explain humans' reactions to robots that looked and acted almost human. Mori hypothesized that when we encounter humanlike technological objects, our feelings of affinity toward them tend to increase as their verisimilitude increase. (To use a Star Wars example, think of the way we’re more positively drawn to C3PO than to R2D2.) However, the moment robots appear or behave in a too humanlike way, our attitude towards them immediately shifts to revulsion. (Think about the difference in your attitude toward C3PO and your attitude toward the King from the Burger King commercials.) Crossing that line between “humanlike” and “too humanlike,” Mori hypothesized, is like stepping off a precipice. Things just get creepier and creepier.

In the 50 years since Mori first hypothesized the uncanny valley, as we all know, technology has advanced at light-speed. Improvements in robotics, computer generated imagery, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence technologies have made it increasingly difficult for us to readily perceive the difference between the human and the humanlike. All of this sparked renewed interest in Mori’s hypothesis: cognitive scientists and neuroscientists engaged in experimental “testing” of the uncanny valley. Psychoanalysts reopened their Freud, Jentsch, and Lacan books for reconsideration. (Philosophers did, too, but they added Schelling, Nietzsche, and Guy de Bord.) Philosophers of technology were born, as film and literary critics congratulated each other on hitting the lottery.

Also important to note: Mori’s original essay states that his was an “incomplete” theory, and he very explicitly calls for readers to “build an accurate map of the uncanny valley.”

So, today, we’re going to talk about the uncanny, the uncanny valley, whether or not our ability to distinguish between the human and the humanlike is fading, and if that matters.

Prepare to be creeped out.

Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-110-the-uncanny-valley

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