Creepy Robots Becoming the Social Norm

For this weeks class the discussion was about this aspect of humanoid robots and how people react toward them.  By using the Uncanny Valley prediction you can predict that the more human-like a robot gets, the more "creeped" out a person reacts toward it.  On the contrary, the more basic a robot is, the less skeptical humans are toward it.

This concept was put into a reality for us by watching a short film "Be Right Back."  In the film the main characters Martha and Ash are married.  Ash dies in a can accident early in the film and Martha is left alone, also pregnant, to deal with her grief.  During the film one of Martha's friends sends her a link to a company that uses anything the deceased person has ever posted online to recreate them.  This process starts out as instant messaging which evolves to Martha talking on the phone to her new Ash, and eventually the company clones Ash and Martha gets her dead husband in robot form.

This film goes hand in hand with the Uncanny Valley in the way that the more Ash 2 got to be like Ash 1, the more uncomfortable I felt towards him and Martha as well.  It was like he was Ash but at the same time he was not Ash.  He had no feelings, he had to learn a lot of things like how a baby would.  How to feel and how to have affection and how to respond sensible in certain situations.

In a way there were also things that made Ash 2 more human like than the real Ash.  Before Ash dies in the film, he is always seen on his phone and rarely paying attention to his surroundings.  A lot like our generation today, too caught up in social media and anything pertaining to technology.  The second Ash did not do this.  He was present in every moment and always wanted to make Marthaa happy.  Always listened for her directions and changed anything she did not like... sounds like a good boyfriend to me!

This film also brings everyone to reality that a digital you does exist.  Do we act differently online than we do in our day to day life? For the most part I would say yes.  People are not as shy when they are behind technology compared to the real world.  People can change their use of language along with many other things while online compared to in their real life.  Martha made the comment that Ash 2 looked like Ash on a good day.  Why is this? Because no one purposly places bad pictures of themselves on the internet.  I know plenty of people who could list "Instagram Model" under a job description for the amount of filters they use on all of their selfies online.  We are all guilty of it, I am definitely.

My final comments on "Be Right Back" and the concept behind all of it is that this technology is here.  It may be hard to visualize it now, but not too far down the road it will be a social norm to recreate a loved one you have lost and maybe that will be the sociably acceptable way to get over a death, who knows.  It is all in the near future and the things that we see as creepy now with the Uncanny Valley will seem as regular as a cell phone is to us now.