Episode 11: The Uncanny Valley: AI and the Fear of what's not quite Human

Has an animated movie ever left you with the willies? Or a robot left you with a pit in your stomach and a feeling of unease?  You may be experience The Uncanny Valley. Today on The Odder, we deep dive into The Uncanny Valley. Featuring Telenoid, the Polar Express, and a persistent Princess Diana Beanie Baby, we take this listener request to the max on our journey for the truth!

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Music Credits
"Airship Serenity" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

"We Wish you a Merry Christmas" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Main Theme:
"Dream Catcher" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

Hello and Welcome to the Odder podcast. I’m your host Madison Paige, and today we are doing a deep dive into the world of AI and how to make a robot that does not fill others with a sense of impending doom. Today on The Odder, we are looking into The Uncanny Valley. What is it? Why does it happen? And how can we avoid it? So grab your servers, your processors, and the mecha frankenstein you’ve been building in your garage and let’s go!

Hey guys, how's everyone doing? I hope you all enjoyed last week's episode. I have had several spirited debates about whether Betty and Barney Hill were telling the truth. I’ll be honest, I like to think they were. This place can seem so bleak sometimes, so unjust, so unfair. It can be nice to think we aren't alone. That maybe someone else is doing things differently. Maybe things are working out better for them. I’ve been in a melancholy mood following the recent political events that have upset and affected so many lives.  I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on what I’m referring to but just know if you are listening to this and you feel the same, I’m right there with you. I’m just a small podcast with not a lot of followers but I can offer you some solidarity and a little time to take your mind off things before we get back to the good fight. So join me today as we talk about The Uncanny Valley. A listener actually requested to do a deep dive on this, so Thank You Ashley. I love your request and I got to learn so much about it. If you have a request of your own, I actually have a time block dedicated solely to listener requests so you can email me at theodderpod@gmail.com, message me on instagram, or facebook, you can even tweet me on twitter but as I’ve states before, I can’t figure it out so it may take a bit to get a response on the twitter. As always if you like this podcast and you want to support me, a review and a follow go a long way. I’m just a one man gang here so all the music, all the editing, all the research, everything is taken care of by me and I feed on encouragement so don’t leave me out to starve. I’m like a house plant, I need water, sunlight, and to be talked to regularly. Anyway, I’ll get out of my little terra cotta pot and get into the world of AI, Animation, and the sense of horror and revulsion some robots make us feel. 

Ok, now picture this. It's Christmas Eve, 2004. You're just a kid, filled with sugar from a day of merrymaking with your family. You all bundled up in some footie pajamas and you know you have to go to bed soon or Santa won’t come. However, you beg and are granted the wish to watch just one more Christmas movie. Curled up on the couch with a soft blanket, a cup of cocoa, and those you hold dear, someone pops in The Polar Express into the dvd player. As the movie plays, you begin to have a feeling you’ve never experienced before. It’s fear but it’s not fear, disgust but not disgust. The character on the screen with their lighthearted numbers on hot chocolate and the all encompassing, soothing voice of Tom Hanks do nothing to quell the sense of unease and danger you feel as that little bespeckled snot nosed kid makes a quip. You pull the blanket over your head and refuse to come out until the movie has ended. Tears in your eyes, you dash to bed and hide under the covers from the dead eyes on the screen. 

Now years later, you might look back on this incident with that embarrassing humor we all look back on the things from our childhood. The Polar Express was just a child’s movie. Maybe not a christmas classic but it definitely made its round in every tv station's 12 days of christmas marathons. So why did it scare you? Was it just childhood naivety? Too much sugar? Or did you experience a phenomena that has hit more than its fair share of innocent watchers of the fictional holiday program?

That feeling of gut knotting fear and sickness at the sight of some animated characters is actually part of a common phenomena referred to as The Uncanny Valley. This is a concept first introduced in the 1970’s by Masahiro Mori. Masahiro at that time, was a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He coined the term to describe the point in which a robot becomes “too human”. He described that when constructing a robot and considering the appearance of it, one had to be careful. The more human a robot looked, the more likely it was to have a positive reaction up until a point. He illustrated a graph in which he plotted how the affinity for the non-human human would grow and grow until suddenly, the observer would experience a severe feeling of horror and disgust. Where at one we regarded the robot with affection, we now only felt unease. To better illustrate this point, let me give you a direct quote from Masahiro’s groundbreaking essay on The Uncanny Valley 

“One might say that the prosthetic hand has achieved a degree of resemblance to the human form, perhaps on a par with false teeth. However, when we realize the hand, which at first looked real, is in fact artificial, we experience an eerie sensation. For example, we could be startled during a handshake by its limp boneless grip together with its texture and coldness. When this happens, we lose our sense of affinity, and the hand becomes uncanny.”

Now you may be asking “Madison, if this is about robots, why did you open with a story about The Polar Express?'' Well, my observant little listener, that is because since the publishing of the article, scientists have begun to realize that The Uncanny Valley is not restricted to just the Robotics field. Any media in Any form in which we are presented with something claiming to be human can fall under the effects of The Uncanny Valley. The Polar Express is one of these. The “dead eyes'' phrase I used earlier has actually been used several times to describe the characters of this film. While the motion capture bodies looked pretty real, eyes can't be motion captured and as such had to be animated separately. This led to a dead and unnatural look that caused many to refer to the characters as creepy or zombie-like. If you haven’t seen polar express, Don’t Worry, I’m sure you’ve run into it before in other media. Some top spots in the valley are held by films such as Tin Toy whose animated baby Billy left many repulsed, TinTin where people complained of the life like bodies that still had the sausage fingers and beak like noses that were more fit for a cartoon strip that a character animated with actual pores, and Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within that garnered people to say that while the characters looked lifelike, they had mechanical movement and their eyes were dead. 

You’ll see the eye complain often. The inability to create the concept of life into eyes that are not alive has left more than one studio reaching for overly cartoonish characters rather than their life-like counterparts. Sitting in the the throne of The Uncanny Valley is the box office bomb, Mars needs Mom. A film so creepy, it led to the studio going under. It’s available on disney+ for those of you who are brave enough. 

This gut wrenching revulsion that makes us want to turn off the movie and turn on an episode of Bob Ross instead can actually be corrected in the robotic counter parts by going farther. 

Masahiro remarked that once the valley was reached, if the roboticist continued further and further in making the robot more and more human-like, eventually the feelings of positivity would return and the humans would start to feel empathetic towards the robot. 

Unfortunately for animated movies, until they come up with a way to bring life to the eyes, it is generally recommended to stay on the oversized eyes, button nose, and disproportionate features  side of things. 

AI is the main focus of the Uncanny Valley discussions on the internet. As humans continue trying to build animatronic companions, we will continue to make equally terrifying ones that haunt the nightmares of everyone who sees them. Take for example Telenoid. Telenoid is a “minimalist communication robot that has no limbs, a bald head and a lifeless face. But for somereason it had beady littles eyes that stare and blink

I’m not kidding, I know it's probably a wonder of mechanics and they worked very hard on it but it is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. Look it up, it sits in a little stand and it's not like it's a tub with a head, it had the nubs where arms and legs would be. When people hold it, they pick it up by its little armpits. Just look it up. You know what, I’m putting a pic on the socials. Enjoys those nightmares courtesy of The Odder.

Diego-san is another example of this. Developed by the University of California San Diego’s Machine Perception Lab. It was developed to help parents better communicate with their infants. Let me say one more time this robot is supposed to simulate an infant before I tell you it is 4 feet tall and weighs 66lbs. Chunky boy. Those who have interacted with Diego San complain of false smiles and eyes that lack life making the baby appear vacant and creepy. I’ll post a pic of him too. We will just have a jamboree of creepy robot pics on the socials maybe that will get us some more listeners. I would also like to state that in all the articles I read on Diego-san they called him a baby but he is over half my height and that terrifies me. 

 If you saw the sneak peek on this episode; what you were looking at was the facial expression of Actroid-F. Actroid-F was created by Japanese Engineers at Kokoro in 2010. It was intended to replace screens and smartphones during long-distance calls by being a physical sit in for the missing person. I actually watched a video on this where they explained that the models have webcams in their eyes that allow them to look around and see people. There are two models now, one is male while the original was female. The man in the interview actually made a point of saying if you took off the wigs they were the same. However, the same problems arose, while the robots look like humans as soon as you interact with them, you run into the dead eyes and the restriction of movement in the face. 

So what makes us feel this way? We know we are looking at animated figures or a robot so why does the almost humanness of their non human natures feel us with such nausea. Well, the truth is, we don't know. There are several theories in the matter however. 

One theory is the Violation of Human Norms. Simply put, this refers to the non-human objects' failure to live up to our human standards. When a robot looks less human, we tend to positively focus on the aspects that make it human. However, if a robot manages to look very human then we focus on the aspects that make it inhuman which causes unease. This thing looks so human but it isn't and that's terrifying. This thing is able to look so human but it can't act like a human and that's terrifying. This theory boils down to us judging the robot as a human failing as a human even though it looks so human.

Another theory is the Salience of Mortality theory. This one is a bit more complicated. It states the uncanny valley rises from our fear of death fighting our culturing ingrained coping mechanism for its inevitability. This theory holds that androids provoke fears of replacement, reduction, or annihilation. This robot looks so human but it doesn't have human needs and fallacies. Am I going to be replaced at my job by a robot who doesn't need breaks? If I die, will my family just replace me with a robot and forget I ever existed? Are humans as a whole going to be wiped out with a mechanical population that doesn't need air? Additionally disassembled robots provoke thoughts of battlefields and decapitation. The dead eyes make us wonder if humans are too just soulless, dead creatures. A robot's jerky movements may elicit fear of losing control of one's body. Overall, the existence of androids brings to the front all of mans failings and fears and that is what provokes the unease

 The next theory is called The Avoidance of Pathogens. Now we all got real acquainted with this fear during Covid. Remember when coughing in the grocery store felt like a death sentence even if it was just from a little tickle in the throat? Basically because the robots look so much like us but are displaying some sort of defect this alerts the cognitive mechanism in our brain that works to avoid contagion. Our brains see the jerky movement or the deadness behind the eyes and it sets off all the alarms in our heads that are like “HEY…That's weird…it looks like us tho…so it must be like us…but there is obviously something wrong with it… What if it's Contagious!” and this forms the basis of the feeling of revulsion we feel. I like this theory because it also kind of support Masihiro’s point that you can push past the uncanny valley by making the robotic even more human like thus diminishing the alerting defect our brains pick up on. 

Next we have The Challenge to Human Identity. This is basically man's pride served for dinner. If we are able to create more of us through robotics than man ceases to be unique. Think of it like The Princess Diana Beanie Baby craze. Now hear me out, does anybody else remember when that news story about The Princess Diana Beanie Baby that sold for $1000. Once that got around everyone that had one was pulling it out to sell on Ebay, toting it as some rare and valuable thing. Of course, this then proved how common it was. Now ebay is still filled with several posts asking whole inheritances for the little purple bear but Walmart will also sell it to you for $21.89. Like Human’s, the Princess Diana Beanie Baby was thought to be rare and priceless, something nobody would just have or make but then it was quickly proven that the market was flush with them. Just as the Princess Diana Beanie Baby (that's the last time I’ll say it I promise) was made worthless and unremarkable, so too can humans be made useless and unremarkable when we can just make more and better versions. 

Ok, the last and final theory we are going to bounce through is called The Discord between Perceptual Cues. This theory posits that the elements of an androids body that are clearly mechanical clashing with the elements that are distinctly human causes our brain to be unable to place the object into a category. This leads to a feeling of unease as we are unable to immediately identify what we are looking at. This actually has a really good example. If you’ve ever seen a picture of Sophia, a humanoid robot created by David Hanson. She got in the news in recent years for agreeing that humans should be destroyed. But Sophia has a very human face that looks very life-like. However, her creator left the back of her head open to a metallic dome that gives away how very much she is not human. The feeling you get when you look at her is exactly what this theory is describing.

Now these theories are all good and grand but there is actually a heavy debate into if this phenomena is even scientific. Masahiro Mori himself said that he didn't explore this concept rigorously from a scientific standpoint, rather that he created it as advice to other roboticists. Karl MacDorman, an associate professor of human-computer interaction at Indiana University said that the graph is better used for learning a concept than actually studying a phenomena. He said “In my own experiments, I have consistently reproduced this effect within and across sense modalities. For example, a mismatch in the human realism of the features of a face heightens eeriness; a robot with a human voice or a human with a robotic voice is eerie.”

When I was contacted about this, the listener specifically pointed to a theory she had heard that The Uncanny Valley originated from Homo Sapiens hunting Hominids. Now hominids were early ape creatures that are part of the human ancestral line. However, aside from a few reddit posts and a creepy pasta that was actually very good, I couldn’t find substantial evidence for this. But what I did find was that our early ancestors were boinking about anything that moved and looked like them. That’s right, you heard it here folks, it wasn't just homo sapiens and neanderthals, Oh No, they were getting jiggy in the jungle in homo erectus, homo habilis, and any other homo about. That's why humans are such a diverse species. Now they were hunting early apes, highly likely but I just couldn't find much in support of our Uncanny Valley sensation originating from hunting and consuming those that looked like us. However Ashley, dear listener, I don’t want you to think me unfair so I did find something kind of related. 

In 2009, a study was conducted using five monkeys. These monkeys were given three pictures: one was a realistic 3D monkey face, one unrealistic 3D monkey face and one photo of a monkey face. The length of time the monkey looked at each picture was then constructed of either revulsion or preference. The monkeys looked less at the realistic 3D picture than either the unrealistic 3D picture or the real photo. This outcome was interpreted as meaning the monkeys had a negative emotional reaction toward the realistic 3D picture.

As is the case with the uncanny valley, close yet imperfect resemblance seemed to induce aversion. The study seemed to suggest that neither human culture nor cognitive processes unique to humans could fully explain the feelings of unease in the uncanny valley. The aversion herein, therefore, seems to be evolutionary in origin. Now does this mean it came from our ancestors? We can’t be sure but the evidence is strong. 

So let’s say you're a wannabe roboticist, you’ve got your frame built and your mother board programmed, how can you avoid the Uncanny Valley? Unless you intend to create creepy characters or evoke a feeling of unease, you can follow certain design principles to avoid the uncanny valley. Christoph Bartneck, an associate professor at the university of Canterbury in New Zealand, recommends avoiding bad character animation or behavior. Make sure your creation’s actions match the emotion they're portraying but don’t go overboard or instead it’ll come off as deceptive. Special attention must also be paid to facial elements such as the forehead, eyes, and mouth, which depict the complexities of emotion and thought. This was a common complaint we saw. People can quickly identify dead eyes, rubber mouths, and unmoving foreheads as being something very not human. “We’re trained to spot even the slightest divergence from ‘normal’ human movements or behavior,” he says. “Hence, we often fail in creating highly realistic, humanlike characters.”

Well, that's all for this episode. So what do you think? Do you think it was an evolutionary response to something we came across that was trying to look human but wasn't? What about that pathogen theory? What do you think we can do to make robots look less terrifying? Let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and leave a review. The Odder Pod is now on TikTok. Come follow us there! Shout out to Ashley for the stellar suggestion? Want your own personalized show? Send me an email at theodderpod@gmail.com with your request and whether you’d like me to mention your name, your alias, or nothing at all. Remember this is The Odder Side so give me something cool, creepy, or confusing to deep dive for you. If you liked the show, leave us a review! They really help! If you don’t have anything to say, just leave a buzzword from today's episode. Let’s do…Princess Diana Beanie Baby. Yes, confuse all the people on the Apple Podcast Manager page and just leave a slew of 5 star reviews saying nothing by Princess Diana Beanie Baby. Maybe they’ll think the podcast is a front for a 90’s culture cult. The Odder Podcast posts every other Thursday. Hopefully Telenoid doesnt haunt anyone's dreams! Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time on The Odder side.