The Uncanny Valley: The Difference in What Makes Us Human vs What Makes Things Fictional (Unhuman)

What Makes Us Human? Is it the way we walk and talk ?  This question may seem rhetorical in a sense, because we as humans don't really know what its like to be something other than what we are so, in order to answer this question we must first have a general idea of what sets apart from everything else. The characteristic that comes up the most is that humans have a way of logical thinking and ability to reason. Even animals have a brain but whose to say they don't have a logical way of reason. This is where the Uncanny Valley comes in to play. It allows a guideline to decipher what is human and what is fictional. It helps explain what is more humanlike and what is not.

 

 In the film, "Be Right Back", a woman is grieving the lost of her husband.  So to try to cope with his loss she begins using a device that allows her to "talk" to her husband.  The system uses data from its online perception of him to allow her to get the feel that she is actually talking to him. From there she gains this obsession with the thought of her husband being there and decides to take it a step further. That next step was to have a humanoid robot of him.  The humanoid robot is an example of what would be considered defined by Uncanny Valley. Even thought the robot is not human it possess a lot of human like characteristics.  This is what scares most humans the most, the fear of the unknown.   Its easy for robots to look like us but what truly sets them apart from us ? Especially the idea that the robot was based solely off of the online interactions of the person.  Since most people in this generation, put most of their lives in some aspect on social media its easy to pick up characteristics of that person. So, if a robot was created of a person and used their social media to base characteristics of that person what would be the distinguisher between the actual human person and the human ? This video really shed light on our use of robots and how technology is evolving.  It causes an uneasy feeling because as technology advances what will be the distinguisher of these differences. What will then make us different from robots ? Will robots eventually take over the world ?  These are definitely questions that will more often take place over the course of time as technology continues to evolve.  But the Uncanny Valley is just the beginning to try to piece together the unknown and fearful idea of what makes us as humans different from everything else.