In an age of artificial intelligence, there is an increasing number of tools and gadgets that speak to us, watch us, help us find our keys, and tell us about everything from the news to the weather. Although we give them names like “Siri” and “Alexa,” we generally don’t find them creepy or unnerving
Artificial Intelligence That Looks Real
As technology evolves, manufacturers have been able to create robots that resemble people
- Lux Botics in Sweden produces robot “clones” of dead partners
- These robots are equipped with speech control, the capacity for facial recognition, and other artificial intelligence capabilities
The Uncanny Valley
Shensheng Wang et al. (2020) explore some of the reasons that people view robots that are too realistic as creepy
- They explain that human replicas often provoke eerie perceptions, a phenomenon known as the “uncanny valley”
- The researchers explored the foundations of this phenomenon through several experiments, including an examination of responses to perceived animacy
Too Close to Real for Comfort
Although humanlike features render robots more human, increasing similarity produces feelings of “unease, eeriness, and revulsion,” creating the phenomenon of the uncanny valley.
- For now, we are apparently more comfortable with gadgets and machines that look like the mechanical objects they are, instead of looking too much like one of us.
