2011
Nov
14
The Uncanny Valley
Posted by David Zaslavsky onHere’s an interesting piece from the BBC about robots, and why humans can find them a little creepy. It links to a paper about the “Uncanny Valley”, the hypothesis that in the spectrum of resemblance to humans, there is a certain region of “almost-humanness” which we actually find repulsive.
While it’s interesting speculation, I have my doubts that it’s that simple. One thing that you learn from “physicist’s intuition” is that whenever you make a graph of something, it’s usually pretty smooth, unless there’s some specific reason for it not to be. In other words, to have a “dip” like the Uncanny Valley, there has to be something really special about whatever is at the bottom of that dip.