My Experience With The Uncanny Valley

I’ve been scared of cats for as long as I can remember. So, when I went to watch the movie “Cats”, I already knew I was going to hate it. Unsurprisingly, the movie creeped me out. However, in retrospect, I realized that “Cats” scared me not because the characters of the movie looked like cats but because they looked like humans! That movie gave me the same feelings I get when I watch YouTube videos of humanoid robots that try to emulate human behavior. I recalled that I also thought that Sophia, the world’s first robot citizen was nightmare-inducing. 

A still image from the movie "Cats"

After mulling it over for a while, I came to the conclusion that I feel uneasy when something looks human-like yet doesn’t look fully human. Thinking that I had discovered something important, I went to do some research and found out, to my dismay, that I was about 50 years too late. Masahiro Mori, a Japanese roboticist talked about “my” discovery in an article titled “Bukimi no Tani” (which translates roughly to Valley of Eeriness) in 1970. The unsettling feeling that I experienced has the term “Uncanny Valley” and even a graph to describe it. According to Mori(1970), as robots appear more and more human-like, they become more appealing to us, but only up to a certain point. When something looks almost, but not quite human, people feel repulsed by it. The “valley” in the name came from the dip that the graph takes as lifelike robots start to resemble humans.

The Uncanny Valley graph

What I think is interesting is how abruptly people’s emotional response shifts from empathy to revulsion as robots start to look almost human. To better illustrate this phenomenon, I will now provide several examples and share my own personal reaction as I move along the Uncanny Valley graph. 

A chair

A chair: At the beginning of the uncanny valley graph, we have completely non-human entities or inanimate objects. For instance, a chair. I personally don’t find chairs scary at all. I also don’t have any emotional connection with chairs.

Industrial robots

Industrial Robots: As we move along the graph a little, we have industrial robots. These are robots placed in fixed positions to automate intensive production tasks. I feel neutral about these.

A toy robot

Toy robots: Now we have robot toys after continuing to progress along the graph for a bit. These have more human-like qualities than industrial robots, obviously. I think these are cute.

An assistant robot

 

Assistant robots: These are robots that are helping with household chores and are providing assistance in different workplaces these days. These have more humanlike qualities than toy robots. I like these a lot. Very cute. (As you can see, robots are getting more likable to me as they are gaining humanlike qualities.)

Sophia

Sophia: Now we’re on the dip of the graph. Here we have humanoid robots like Sophia. These look nearly human and maybe could be mistaken for a human at first. Sophia gives me the heebie-jeebies. Absolutely hate her.

Human

A normal person: We’re out of the valley and at the end of the graph. I like normal healthy 

people.👍

Uncanny Valley highlights the complexity of human perception of non-human objects. The fact that it is still not fully understood why this effect occurs, fascinates me.

 

References:

Mori, M. (2012), The Uncanny Valley: The Original Essay by Masahiro Mori (K. F. Dorman & N. Kageki, Trans.). IEEE Spectrum.https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-uncanny-valley  (Original article published 1970)