In the early 1970s, Japanese researcher Masahiro Mori noticed something interesting. As someone who had spent most of his professional life working with robots, Mori noticed that the more lifelike a robot was, the more people liked it… but only to a certain point. Once the robot became too lifelike, people were repulsed by it. Some people felt physically sick when looking at extremely lifelike robots, while others ran away in fear. And while those were somewhat extreme responses, nearly everyone reported some measure of uneasiness or distress when viewing an ultra-lifelike robot. Dr. Mori, it seems, had unwittingly discovered “Uncanny Valley”.
Back when robots looked more like a pile of car parts than a person – think of the robot from Lost In Space – people looked at them as simple machines, no different, really, than a drill or garbage disposal. Which wasn’t a bad thing, mind you, but it didn’t engender any feelings of warmth for the robots, either. People felt the same way about video games and displays of “virtual people” (like, say a “virtual teller” at an ATM); as long as the representations of people were crude, people had no problem with it.
But technology marches on, and soon video games had people that looked incredibly lifelike. Japanese researchers developed robots that were almost indistinguishable from real people. Hollywood found that movies could be made solely with computer-generated people. And Internet companies developed “virtual people” that could work the customer service desk or be “online ambassadors” for companies. And all of these creeped people out. The question was… why?
