From: Alex Ramonsky (alex@ramonsky.com)
Date: Thu May 16 2002 - 14:48:20 MDT
Michael M. Butler wrote:
>[snip]
>The great Japanese engineer and roboticist Masahiro Mori (author, among
>other things, of The Buddha in the Robot) may already have foreseen that
>roadblock with his notion of the Uncanny Valley. While contemplating the
>coming evolution of robots, he pointed out the way we can quite readily
>empathize with a robot that's, say, 20 percent humanlike, and even more so
>with a robot that's 50 percent, and even more still with a robot that's 90
>percent - indeed, you can plot out a rising slope of anthropomorphizing
>empathy. From Mickey Mouse through Shrek, say. But somewhere beyond 95
>percent, Mori hypothesizes, there's a precipitous drop-off into the Uncanny
>Valley. When a replicant is almost completely human, the slightest variance,
>the 1 percent that's not quite right, looms up enormously, rendering the
>entire effect somehow creepy and monstrously alien.
>[snip]
>Can that Valley be traversed? Well, even Mori portrays it as a valley,
>rising sharply back up on the other side as it approaches 100 percent
>similitude. I started working on this story convinced that it couldn't be
>crossed (it's a matter of religion with me, too). And yet ...
>
>
>Thank you, uncannily, for an almost perfect description of the way most people seem to feel about me! Y'know...I look human, most of the time I behave in a reasonably human way...and then I go and do or say something that is just a tiny bit 'wrong' and everybody blows it out of all proportion!
>
Monstrously Alien,
3.142 Uncanny Valley,
Weirdsville, CGI
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:08 MST