On one of the episodes of Black Mirror, it hinted at
Masahiro Mori's work about "The Uncanny Valley." In this episode,
there was a man named Ash who was extremely active online. Not long after the
episode started, he died and his wife, Martha, was an emotional wreck. She shut
people out of her life whole life and she was obviously depressed. At his wake,
one of her friends mentioned a technological advance that could collect all of
someone's posts online, analyze them, and then reply to texts as if it were
really that person. Martha was very against his idea and she had a nervous
breakdown at the wake. She was then so desperate to see or hear from him, she
asked her friend about the technology. She said, “Ash would be a perfect person
for this because he was on social media so much.” So, she downloaded the
technology and much to her surprise, it replied. It would response with things like, “isn’t
that what he would say?” Eventually she could do more with this technology. She even paid to have a robot that was a perfect simulation of Ash. Isn't it what she asked for? Why did it freak her out so much?
Mori would say it is due to the uncanny valley. This is where people
like things that pretend to be human, if they are not TOO close to a real
human.
Robots that look like a piece of heavy machinery are fine, but they are
more popular the more they look real, until they hit a certain point where it
is too much like a human but just not quite there. It is a valley because it
does not just end like falling off a cliff. It comes back up like with prosthetic
legs or a real human. This video shows great examples of the different stages on the chart.
2 comments:
Just to be open minded about the situation, I think the idea of speaking to someone who has passed, through a simulation ,is a good thing to have for closure. I remember when my father passed when i was ten years old i still did not understand a lot of things and i had a lot of unanswered questions. i even had re occurring dreams of me speaking to him and vice versa. so when Martha spoke to ash through text and phone call it was not so creepy. it was until it reached the uncanny valley that it became unacceptable and just flat out desperate of her to order the humanlike robot.
Your are right about bringing somebody back to life is going way too far. As to what you said, death is part of life. Death is saddest part of our life. Especially when one of our love ones pass away, because we've all been there. Additionally, Martha can't just keep hiding robot ash in the attic. She's going to have to show him to their families and most importantly, their daughter.
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