The Uncanny Valley

Artificial intelligence is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision- making, and translation between languages.

The uncanny valley is a hypothesized relationship between the degree off an objects resemblance to a human being and a human’s response to that object. The response is uncanny because it appears strangely familiar. But what makes it appear strange or cause you to feel uncomfortable? It is learned. The “Uncanny Valley” is an example of how learned behavior has affected our views of Artificial Intelligence. We did not just wake up one morning and decide that robots were creepy. These views have been brought upon us from others in our lives, the internet, social media, and movies. For example, children of younger ages are in most cases, less likely to feel creeped out by human like androids because this fear has yet to be introduced to them. This suggests that our sense of the “Uncanny Valley” is a learned behavior, not something that is innate. Those that have been introduced to the rebellious robots might feel that the robots have their own distinct mind or that a software might become self-aware. For instance, I recently watched one of the many Terminator movies title Terminator 2: Judgement day. Just from watching this movie and some of the traumatizing events caused during it, I felt a lot less lenient towards artificial intelligence. In the movie, the software became self-aware and began to, that easily, turn against the human race. Another example is the self-driving Uber car incident. Every incident that we hear about makes us a little more judgmental about artificial intelligence.

But, I personally feel that we as humans can be pretty biased towards artificial intelligence. We only like it up until a certain point in which it benefits us or in other words once it has reached the Uncanny Valley. We are definitely not against advances in technology but feel that certain advances have gone too far or become disturbing. It could be the possibility that at some point we might not be able to tell the difference. When compared to the episode of Be Right Back, Ash 2 looked pretty much identical to Ash 1. I think that is pretty scary and unhealthy way to deal with grief especially if that type of technically were to get into the wrong hands.