Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how stoffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick in.
Speaker 1: Today is going to be the second part of a
Speaker 1: two part series we're doing on the Uncanny Valley. Last time,
Speaker 1: we ventured into the Uncanny Valley, so if you haven't
Speaker 1: heard that episode, you should go back and listen to that. First,
Speaker 1: we lay a lot of the groundwork for what we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about today, But we explored the origination
Speaker 1: of the concept of the Uncanny Valley, what it means
Speaker 1: to be in the Uncanny Valley, and some research on
Speaker 1: whether this valley actually exists or not. Today, I think
Speaker 1: we want to start off by looking at if if
Speaker 1: it does exist, what might be some explanations for it. Indeed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna dive into it a bit more
Speaker 1: and move, as the title, uh suggests, beyond the Uncanny Valley.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, I do want to talk
Speaker 1: about RoboCop. Of course you want to talk about RoboCop,
Speaker 1: because we talked about RoboCop pretty much every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's an important film important films, I'll say
Speaker 1: at least at least the first to arguably the third
Speaker 1: one to throwing the TV series if you like. But wait,
Speaker 1: there was a TV series RoboCop. It was one of
Speaker 1: those that would I think it would come on Sci
Speaker 1: Fi or it came on various cable channels. I only
Speaker 1: have a vague awareness of it because it seemed to
Speaker 1: be a far lower key RoboCop type show. So in
Speaker 1: many of the studies that we talked about in the
Speaker 1: last episode, they were looking at largely three categories of
Speaker 1: of robots and humans and androids. So you had pure
Speaker 1: robots things that are just undeniably machines and we're mostly
Speaker 1: okay with. Then you have humans or or or perfect
Speaker 1: human replications. Okay, so you look at it, it either
Speaker 1: is a human or it's such a good representation of
Speaker 1: a human ideally that you would not think that it
Speaker 1: was a robot. Right. The third category here is where
Speaker 1: you're gonna get into the danger zone, right, the human
Speaker 1: like robots where you look at it and you say,
Speaker 1: I see what you're going for there, but it's creeping
Speaker 1: me out. So I think it's interesting to aligne this
Speaker 1: up with the Holy Trinity of Robocops. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: will mostly make sense if you've seen the RoboCop films,
Speaker 1: but I feel like most people know what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. First of all, you had the the proto
Speaker 1: RoboCop add two oh nine. Oh. This is maybe the
Speaker 1: greatest scene in the first film is before we get
Speaker 1: a humanoid RoboCop, they just have this big drone object
Speaker 1: that is supposed to enforce the law and it ends
Speaker 1: up shooting somebody in the boardroom. Yeah. It's a walking
Speaker 1: law enforcement tank with a robot commanding robot voice so
Speaker 1: that you look at it and there's no to not
Speaker 1: this is not a friendly device. But it's not really
Speaker 1: humanoid at all, not really at all. It hit just
Speaker 1: walks on big, big legs that can't even navigate and stairs.
Speaker 1: But I would say I have great affinity for ed
Speaker 1: to oh nine. Yeah, I mean, you know, without having
Speaker 1: to worry about it actually shooting me. Uh, it's kind
Speaker 1: of cute in a way. Now then we have RoboCop
Speaker 1: itself himself, the classic RoboCop, thee Peter Weller, and uh
Speaker 1: he is a cyborg or perhaps an android, depending on
Speaker 1: how you want to view the descriptions. So he's he
Speaker 1: has a relatable, living human face which is a fixed
Speaker 1: to to honor him in some some explanations, or perhaps
Speaker 1: to make him more comfortable not only as a police
Speaker 1: killing machine but also a community law enforcement officer. So RoboCop,
Speaker 1: you know, moves around with very robotic movements, speaks in
Speaker 1: a very robotic voice, but his face is a living
Speaker 1: human face. So in a way like that, that seems
Speaker 1: like it might it just sort of you know, to
Speaker 1: read perhaps more into the original film than was intended.
Speaker 1: Perhaps this was a way to to get beyond the
Speaker 1: Uncanny Valley. We can't replicate the human face. We'll just
Speaker 1: get an actual human face from the dead cop and
Speaker 1: just plaster it up there. Oh but I'd say RoboCop
Speaker 1: with his mask on really does kind of get into
Speaker 1: the Uncanny Valley, and and Weller does some good work
Speaker 1: forcing us in there. Like I think that they're the
Speaker 1: sort of going for it. Yeah, Okay, Well that brings
Speaker 1: us to the next generation RoboCop two, which is not
Speaker 1: just the name of the second RoboCop movie, but also
Speaker 1: the model of RoboCop that replaced the original RoboCop. They think, Hey,
Speaker 1: what would happen if we put tom noon in in there,
Speaker 1: that's right. So they have another essentially a walking tank
Speaker 1: kind of like Ed Too O nine, except it's powered
Speaker 1: by the brain of a psychotic drug lord named Kane
Speaker 1: played by Tom Noonan. He's fabulous in it. Uh. But
Speaker 1: here's the here's the thing. It's walking around, it's killing
Speaker 1: everything with a gatling gun. But then it can pop
Speaker 1: a flat screen TV out of it out of the
Speaker 1: front of its body, and on that screen is a
Speaker 1: twisted uncanny lawnmower man esque c g I face of
Speaker 1: Tom Noonan. Yeah. So so that one really leans into
Speaker 1: the Uncanny Valley. Well yeah, and this this does point
Speaker 1: out another thing, which is that there have been plenty
Speaker 1: of intentional realizations of the Uncanny Valley in film. When
Speaker 1: when people are trying to create an unsettling, unpleasant humanoid
Speaker 1: for story purposes, if it's supposed to be a villain,
Speaker 1: if it's supposed to make people uncomfortable, because that's its
Speaker 1: role in the plot. So one thing I kind of
Speaker 1: wish we'd done. I hadn't even thought about this is
Speaker 1: too if we could talk to somebody who has intentionally
Speaker 1: made things in the Uncanny Valley, what did they do
Speaker 1: on purpose to get it there. If your your job
Speaker 1: is to make a humanoid robot or an animated humanoid
Speaker 1: figure that intentionally pushes all the bad buttons and climbs
Speaker 1: as far down into the valley as it can, what
Speaker 1: do you do that would that would provide some really
Speaker 1: interesting insight into what it actually takes to get there. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, to come back to video games, something that
Speaker 1: comes up a lot. You see these videos going viral
Speaker 1: where it's like just a cut scene or a clip
Speaker 1: from the video game with a humanoid character in a
Speaker 1: more or less human situation, except something screwed up in
Speaker 1: the face is missing, so it's just two floating eyeballs
Speaker 1: and maybe a floating set of digital t So the
Speaker 1: context is key there, Like this thing is acting as
Speaker 1: if it had a face, and it's in an environment
Speaker 1: where we're unsupposed to just roll with it, but clearly
Speaker 1: something's wrong. Yes, okay, Well, as we said in the
Speaker 1: last episode, we talked about the origin of the idea,
Speaker 1: We talked about some evidence for and against the fact
Speaker 1: that the Uncanny Valley actually exists, to to the point
Speaker 1: that it actually does exist to some extent, maybe not
Speaker 1: in the naive original sense everybody would say, where it's
Speaker 1: just related to the amount of realistic human nous in
Speaker 1: a figure, but has other dimensions as well. What causes
Speaker 1: our Uncanny Valley reaction? Obviously people do have this reaction
Speaker 1: they see a humanoid robot or a humanoid animated character,
Speaker 1: the Scorpion King, the final Fantasy, the spirits within characters,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, and we get so, what causes it?
Speaker 1: Why do our brains react that way? Is it biological?
Speaker 1: Is it pure instinct? Is it a learned psychological reaction?
Speaker 1: Is it part of our culture? Is something coming from
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance of some sort? Now, to go back to
Speaker 1: the origins of the idea with massive hero Mari in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy and his original paper on the Uncanny Valley,
Speaker 1: Morey speculates that the Uncanny Valley might be a side
Speaker 1: effect of the self preservation instinct. In other words, it's
Speaker 1: a biological adaptation that helps us avoid disease and death. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he starts with the observation that when a normal,
Speaker 1: healthy person becomes sick and eventually dies, they basically tend
Speaker 1: to slide down from the second peak of the Uncanny Valley.
Speaker 1: What we were calling the realism peak, the reality peak,
Speaker 1: and slide down into the uncanny valley. It's like they
Speaker 1: become more like these upsetting puppets and robots. You know,
Speaker 1: they might uh suffer some kind of change in their
Speaker 1: in their the appearance of their skin, of their eyes,
Speaker 1: of their facial expressions. Things begin to look off about them.
Speaker 1: And he writes, quote, the sense of eeriness is probably
Speaker 1: a form of instinct that protects us from proximal rather
Speaker 1: than distal sources of danger. Proximal sources of danger include corpses,
Speaker 1: members of different species, and other entities we can closely approach.
Speaker 1: Distal sources of danger include windstorms and floods. You know,
Speaker 1: this is interesting the dimension of other species. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know how many films and documentaries I've seen of say,
Speaker 1: lions running around in the natural habitat, and it's almost
Speaker 1: never creepy, No, not not at all, and yet and
Speaker 1: then mostly a lot of times when I'm in a zoo,
Speaker 1: it's not creepy. But there have been times I take
Speaker 1: my son to the zoo a lot here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and there are times when we go down to the
Speaker 1: lion enclosure and we're the only people there at the
Speaker 1: zoo because we've arrived super early and we just we're
Speaker 1: hanging out with a lion on the other side of
Speaker 1: the glass. You know, we're perfectly safe, but a deep
Speaker 1: uneasiness comes over me, washes over me, and uh, and
Speaker 1: I'm just confronted by the the the danger of the situation,
Speaker 1: Like there's a danger that that goes beyond any reason
Speaker 1: because I am in close proximity to a dangerous member
Speaker 1: of another species of carnivorous predator, tory animal that would,
Speaker 1: in under normal conditions, potentially kill me. Now there is
Speaker 1: I would bet a very different kind of sensation going
Speaker 1: on inside you when you're in proximity to a lion
Speaker 1: than when you see a creepy looking humanoid robot or
Speaker 1: a creepy looking animation human animation. Right, Like it's it's
Speaker 1: probably exciting. The difference between the when when we talked
Speaker 1: about the creepiness episode the creed, the difference between the
Speaker 1: sort of like uncomfortable threat ambiguity versus sensing that there
Speaker 1: truly is a threat of some kind, right, And you know,
Speaker 1: we spoke to illness here, you know, and like certainly
Speaker 1: someone we talked about like what happens when a co
Speaker 1: worker walks up to you and they're they're sniveling or
Speaker 1: more a little bit pale. Uh, and they say, let's French. Well,
Speaker 1: well hopefully not, but yeah, there's a there's an at
Speaker 1: least an initial sense of, oh, what's wrong with this person? Um,
Speaker 1: I wonder if what they have as contagious, should they
Speaker 1: even be at work? I hope they cover their mouth
Speaker 1: when they sneeze, because we are going to be concerned
Speaker 1: on some level with catching whatever they have. If it's
Speaker 1: it's it's transmittable, right and it I mean there are
Speaker 1: some ways in which we know that seeing illness and
Speaker 1: other people in sights a reaction in the disgust response, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's been actually a lot of research on the
Speaker 1: the disgust response. Darwin wrote about it. Discuss Us from
Speaker 1: an evolutionary standpoint, is all about disease avoidance, you know,
Speaker 1: like do not eat this, you know, stay away from Yeah,
Speaker 1: something's not right here. You might hurt yourself or get sick.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about sensuous discuss So discuss it's tied
Speaker 1: to the senses to sense information that we're absorbing. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is deeply seated in the insula the area of
Speaker 1: the brain that that malfunctions in patients with obsessive compulsive disorder,
Speaker 1: causing them to say, you know, wash and clean things
Speaker 1: endlessly or vacuum unrelenting lee. So the malfunction of that
Speaker 1: area gives us, you know, gives us a clue into
Speaker 1: its functionality. Uh. One interesting fact about disgusting smells, however,
Speaker 1: is that there's a drop off point for bad smell recognition,
Speaker 1: but not for good smells. So I think we've all
Speaker 1: encountered this where it's that like, say, say you're in
Speaker 1: your your office and and you share your office with
Speaker 1: a cat box, and at some point the cat uh
Speaker 1: causes quite a stink in there, and you register it first,
Speaker 1: and like, jeez, I should stop what I'm doing and
Speaker 1: clean out that cat box, but you keep working and
Speaker 1: then after a while you don't smell it anymore. But
Speaker 1: then maybe you step outside to check the mail, or
Speaker 1: you go to the you know, the grocery store to
Speaker 1: pick something up, or you know, your partner comes home
Speaker 1: and when when you or they enter the room, you go, cheese,
Speaker 1: what happened in here? Did the cat do something? Again? No,
Speaker 1: you're just re smelling there. Originally you forgot about it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the brain kind of decides. Look at this point,
Speaker 1: I assume you know that she that the the cheese
Speaker 1: is nasty and you're not going to eat it um
Speaker 1: or or that yes, there is animal poop around here.
Speaker 1: It's it's done, it's part. It's warned you. But the
Speaker 1: good smell will keep resonating because the good smell is
Speaker 1: probably saying, hey, there's something over here delicious to eat
Speaker 1: with some fresh berries or whatnot. And it'll keep saying, hey,
Speaker 1: the berries are still here. Why haven't you eaten them yet?
Speaker 1: This is there's not a lot of sugar out here.
Speaker 1: You should it at these berries? Why you have a chance.
Speaker 1: So the beautiful remains beautiful, The sweet smelling remains sweet smelling.
Speaker 1: But something that is disgusting, even as you know, discussing
Speaker 1: as a foul smell, we can grow accustomed to. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what's the analogy to the Uncanny Valley here? Well,
Speaker 1: I think the analogy here is that if you have
Speaker 1: a discussed response to to visual sense information regarding an
Speaker 1: individual's appearance, a robots appearance, a computer animated characters appearance,
Speaker 1: there could there could also be this disgust drop off
Speaker 1: point as you grow accustomed to it. Oh, and that's
Speaker 1: something that we have seen. We talked about a little
Speaker 1: bit in the last episode, and that, uh, some people
Speaker 1: attest that when you spend time around these robots or uh,
Speaker 1: well it was mainly for the robots. The robots that
Speaker 1: at first seemed creepy, they they stop bothering. You become
Speaker 1: accustomed to them, they're not creepy anymore. I don't so
Speaker 1: much know if that's always going to be the case
Speaker 1: for creepy looking animated humans. Um, but who knows. Now.
Speaker 1: Another thing to keep in mind too, is that the
Speaker 1: discussed response is going to depend on a number of
Speaker 1: different factors, some of which are going to be tied
Speaker 1: to hormonal situations. So, for instance, pregnant women are more
Speaker 1: sensitive to discussed and this is linked to their elevated
Speaker 1: progesterone levels. So uh, and of course there's gonna be
Speaker 1: other factors beyond that for every individual. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: think that there's certainly could be some amount of biological
Speaker 1: instinctual response going on in the uncanny value effect, to
Speaker 1: the extent that it exists. But I think also based
Speaker 1: on what we've seen so far, that probably does not
Speaker 1: account for all of it. Uh, And I think another
Speaker 1: thing to consider would be going to more more complex
Speaker 1: sort of cognitive psychology, such as cognitive dissonance. Now, if
Speaker 1: you were to just ask me what I thought was
Speaker 1: the most likely answer before I got into the research,
Speaker 1: I would intuitively tend to think that the best answer
Speaker 1: for what causes the uncanny value effect primarily is our
Speaker 1: inherent discomfort with category confusions. Uh. This is something that
Speaker 1: I think about a lot, in like the creation of
Speaker 1: monster mythology and stuff like that. We we don't like
Speaker 1: the feeling produced by by things that don't fit into
Speaker 1: our normal taxonomys for objects in the world and seem
Speaker 1: to violate our tax taxonomic ordering system. And this is
Speaker 1: why I think monsters are so often hybrids of existing
Speaker 1: things a bull's head on a man's body, things that
Speaker 1: defy our intuitive classification rules. They make us uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: cause a sense of unease, leading to this uncanny feeling.
Speaker 1: So that that's what I would have intuitively said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Is it wolf or is it man?
Speaker 1: Is it or is it man? Right? But negative affinity
Speaker 1: resulting from this difficulty and assigning the entity to a category.
Speaker 1: Is it robot or human. Despite my intuitive favor for
Speaker 1: this explanation, I think it looks like your mental evidence
Speaker 1: for this is not strong. And in fact, in some
Speaker 1: ways some of the studies we've looked at have somewhat
Speaker 1: invalidated this. For example, in the last episode at the end,
Speaker 1: I was talking about that study by Mather and Rifling,
Speaker 1: and it did not find evidence of a strong correlation
Speaker 1: between here. Here's what you notice here, the time it
Speaker 1: took people to rate the mechano humanoid qualities of a robot,
Speaker 1: and that robot pictures likability. So if you were talking
Speaker 1: it up to category confusion, you would probably think the
Speaker 1: robots that people took the longest time to figure out
Speaker 1: how to rate on the mechano humanoid scale, and those
Speaker 1: would be the least likable, right, because they're the ones
Speaker 1: causing the most category confusion. Right. But I mean you
Speaker 1: could also say that, well, you're not maybe having not
Speaker 1: a you're not having a visceral gut reaction to them either.
Speaker 1: You haven't to think it out and try and you know,
Speaker 1: analyze how you feel about it. Oh yeah, I'd say
Speaker 1: that's exactly what we don't like. I mean, we like
Speaker 1: to be able to viscerally category arise things. But but
Speaker 1: then the uncanny valley is often, at least in terms
Speaker 1: of the way you're going to find it invoked by
Speaker 1: the average person. It's often discussed if it's as if
Speaker 1: it's a visceral reaction, the sort of i'll kill it
Speaker 1: with fire reaction people might have where I hate that
Speaker 1: saying yes, I'm not a fan as well, especially when
Speaker 1: it is applied to outside of of of fictional connotations. Right.
Speaker 1: But so, they point out The authors here point out
Speaker 1: that they did not find this. Uh. They point out
Speaker 1: that it's just not a fact that the things that
Speaker 1: took longer to look at and decide where the least likable.
Speaker 1: Though while this is not statistically important, just as a
Speaker 1: point of curiosity, the single face that took the longest
Speaker 1: to rate on the mechanical versus humanoid quality was also
Speaker 1: just about the most disliked face in their whole collection
Speaker 1: of faces, But that was just like one outlier overall,
Speaker 1: this did not present as a general effect. Other studies
Speaker 1: have also looked into this and have failed to find
Speaker 1: solid evidence for category confused and as the primary driver
Speaker 1: of the negative affinity at the bottom of the uncanny valley.
Speaker 1: So it looks like my intuitions here I think are wrong.
Speaker 1: But there's something that's kind of related as an idea
Speaker 1: that's been explored, and that is the idea of perceptual mismatch.
Speaker 1: So several authors have advocated the idea that this perceptual
Speaker 1: mismatch could be the primary cause of what we don't
Speaker 1: like about things that we would intuitively say fall into
Speaker 1: the uncanny valley. So one piece of research I want
Speaker 1: to mention is a sort of review by uh Cat
Speaker 1: Siri that is a review of empirical evidence on different
Speaker 1: uncanny valley hypotheses support for perceptual mismatch as one road
Speaker 1: to the valley of eeriness that gott to give it
Speaker 1: a different name, apparently in Frontiers in Psychology. And so
Speaker 1: in this study, the author's review present research and claim
Speaker 1: that experimental research attempting to show the uncanny valley has
Speaker 1: been inconsistent. They don't exactly say that the uncanny valley
Speaker 1: doesn't exist, but that it's not as simple as often
Speaker 1: believed to be. Something we've been saying for a while now.
Speaker 1: It's it's not that any manipulation of the variable of
Speaker 1: human likeness leads to Uncanny Valley effects. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: that the horizontal axis on the graph is more complicated
Speaker 1: than just the question of how realistically human is it.
Speaker 1: I've seen this come up enough now that I'm pretty
Speaker 1: convinced that that is not necessarily the only or even
Speaker 1: the primary factor here. But they still recognize that there
Speaker 1: is some kind of effect here. So they claim that
Speaker 1: there's evidence against the category confusion basis that we were
Speaker 1: just talking about. But they claim that there has been
Speaker 1: good evidence in support of the perceptual mismatch hypothesis, And
Speaker 1: I want to read what they say. They say quote
Speaker 1: taken together, The present review suggested that although not any
Speaker 1: kind of human likeness manipulation leads to the uncanny Valley,
Speaker 1: the uncanny valley could be caused by more specific perceptual
Speaker 1: mismatch conditions. Such conditions could originate at least from inconsistent
Speaker 1: real is um levels between individual features, and the examples
Speaker 1: they give would be like artificial eyes on a human
Speaker 1: like face, or the presence of atypical features such as
Speaker 1: a typically large eyes on an otherwise humanlike character. So
Speaker 1: what they're saying there is not necessarily that you can't
Speaker 1: tell whether it's a robot or a human, but that
Speaker 1: there have been multiple experiments that seem to show people
Speaker 1: are unsettled and made unhappy by things where the features
Speaker 1: on the face or the features of the figure as
Speaker 1: a whole are inconsistently realistic. Like we're more okay with
Speaker 1: a robot that's consistently realistic at a certain level at
Speaker 1: maybe say seventy percent, than something that has eyes at
Speaker 1: nine percent and skin attent. This reminds me. This is
Speaker 1: just coming off the top of my head. So I
Speaker 1: don't have the artist's name here, but there's there's an
Speaker 1: artist who's worth made the rounds where they took cartoon characters,
Speaker 1: they depicted them realistically. So it's Simpson. Yes, Homer Simpson
Speaker 1: with like pores on his skin, you know, like horrible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that comes to mind. It is a kind of
Speaker 1: a possible example of this. Yeah, I think that's a
Speaker 1: good explanation. So I want to get into my main
Speaker 1: takeaways from looking at the Uncanny Valley research so far.
Speaker 1: Maybe you can let me know what you think about this.
Speaker 1: I'd say, first of all, I think the Uncanny Valley
Speaker 1: is a real thing, but it's not as simple as
Speaker 1: Maury's original hypothesis would lead you to believe. Uh. First
Speaker 1: of all, people definitely do get creeped out by lots
Speaker 1: of almost human looking things, But it's not necessarily just
Speaker 1: that the near failed human realism is what makes them unsettling.
Speaker 1: There are other things that appear to be making them unsettling, though,
Speaker 1: that the near humanness plays some kind of role. And
Speaker 1: the other big thing is that there appear to be
Speaker 1: multiple dimensions to explain the phenomenon. Right, So, synthetic humanoid images,
Speaker 1: whether robotic or animated, offer multiple dimensions of attraction and revulsion.
Speaker 1: I think it's possible that there are some biologically triggered effects,
Speaker 1: the appearance of health or disease, the appearance of life
Speaker 1: or death. But then I think there are possibly other
Speaker 1: things triggered by psychological cognitive dissonance. Probably not category confusion, um,
Speaker 1: but but some good evidence for this idea of the
Speaker 1: perceptual mismatch being the cause. And then the final thing
Speaker 1: is that the Uncanny Valley effect is context dependent. How
Speaker 1: long have you been exposed to the image in what's setting?
Speaker 1: Is it part of a narrative or some other context
Speaker 1: in which you're being asked to suspend your disbelief or
Speaker 1: otherwise put yourself in a state of openness. Robert, what
Speaker 1: do you think about all this so far? You've got
Speaker 1: any disagreement? No, I mean I feel like my view
Speaker 1: on it closely lines up with with with yours here
Speaker 1: basically that it's just that there is an effect going on,
Speaker 1: but it's far it's far more nuanced than simply oh
Speaker 1: these are these are the factors that make something fall
Speaker 1: into the uncanny valley, not just how realistically human. There's
Speaker 1: there's other stuff going on, right, and not just a
Speaker 1: mere hybridization. I was instantly thinking about um, the borg
Speaker 1: and uh and occasionally, you know the sort of sexy
Speaker 1: boards that show up in the Star Trek universe, like
Speaker 1: there's there's clearly category confusion going on there, but they're
Speaker 1: they're not depicted as particularly uncanny, like it was the
Speaker 1: board Queen. Was she uncanny kind of? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, even when I'm not a big fan of
Speaker 1: the way the board look well, but the outside of
Speaker 1: the board. You can also think of, you know, various
Speaker 1: sort of hybrid human creatures depicted in fantasy and fiction
Speaker 1: that that are created in such a way to the
Speaker 1: the alluring. Uh, like they managed to fetishize the inhuman
Speaker 1: qualities of them the category confusion. Yeah, uh yeah. It
Speaker 1: makes me think that there are certain qualities of the
Speaker 1: human appearance that, if altered, are much more significant in
Speaker 1: terms of our affects response than others. So it could
Speaker 1: be I'm just making this up. I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is true, but that like getting the getting the
Speaker 1: size of the eyes wrong could quite easily lead to
Speaker 1: a disgust response and revulsion, but getting the size of
Speaker 1: the nose wrong wouldn't. Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: or just thinking of eyes like definitely, making the eyes
Speaker 1: inappropriately large leads a creepy factor, and this is often employed.
Speaker 1: I instantly think of the vampire movie. What twenty thirty
Speaker 1: days of Night is that the name of it? Oh,
Speaker 1: something like that, Yeah, where they did some sort of
Speaker 1: digital effect to make ory. I don't remember the number,
Speaker 1: some number of days of PPD days of night. Um,
Speaker 1: I didn't actually see if the trailers were we're certainly interesting.
Speaker 1: But likewise, if you just take an individual and have
Speaker 1: them wear blackout contact lenses, yeah, like that is often
Speaker 1: sometimes that's played up for creepiness, but a lot of
Speaker 1: times it's played up for to be alluring. You'll have uh,
Speaker 1: male or female characters that are are otherwise dressed in
Speaker 1: some alluring fashion, but they have blacked out eyes and
Speaker 1: it's who it's kind of like supernatural, sexy cool, as
Speaker 1: opposed to just like, oh my god, why why are
Speaker 1: your eyes pits of darkness? Yeah, but maybe that's just me. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I think we should take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we will go beyond the Uncanny Valley.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, Okay, So Robert, I can recall
Speaker 1: discussions going back for years about whether we're going to
Speaker 1: make it out of the Uncanny Valley in the realm
Speaker 1: of robotics or animation, And I think from here on
Speaker 1: I want to focus primarily on animation, just just to
Speaker 1: keep us focused. And I think there are actually two
Speaker 1: separate questions here, assuming that the Uncanny Valley is to
Speaker 1: some extent to go heerent idea. We've already explained all
Speaker 1: the ways in which it's obviously way more complicated than
Speaker 1: the naive popular culture culture understanding of it. But the
Speaker 1: two big questions. Number one, can we make realistic looking
Speaker 1: humanoid characters that aren't creepy I think the answer here
Speaker 1: is yes, I think it's not a two dimensional graph.
Speaker 1: I think you can make things that aren't quite photo
Speaker 1: realistic but look realistic that aren't creepy. Current generation video
Speaker 1: games have been doing this, and as I mentioned in
Speaker 1: the last episode, I think that their tricks to doing
Speaker 1: this it's apparently in achieving like the right combination of
Speaker 1: realistic traits and unrealistic traits that maybe you would just
Speaker 1: land on by doing trial and error in design over time.
Speaker 1: You would never mistake these characters for photographs of real humans.
Speaker 1: But they're also not cartoony. They've got this feeling of
Speaker 1: really real ishness, if you know what I mean. But
Speaker 1: they've they've they've attained sort of a generally acceptable plateau
Speaker 1: of realistic affect, but they're not skewing into these different
Speaker 1: danger zones adjacent photo real is him where the shortcomings
Speaker 1: become creepy and off putting and we don't like it.
Speaker 1: Then there would be another question, and that's just can
Speaker 1: we make animated characters that are robustly indistinguishable from human like?
Speaker 1: Can we get all the way up the other side
Speaker 1: of the mountain, up to the peak of reality? And
Speaker 1: last week, if you'd asked me, my personal answer would
Speaker 1: have been no, not yet. But I think that's actually
Speaker 1: not as clear cut as we would first guess, because
Speaker 1: you think that perhaps many of the humans we see
Speaker 1: on TV are actually digital creations. Oh I know for
Speaker 1: a fact that that who's that guy, that Jimmy Fallon guy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Jimmy Fallon might be a computer generated that
Speaker 1: is not a person. He has been generated by a
Speaker 1: computer that's in Palo Alto, California. It's a supercomputer. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a really good computer. But yeah, Well, I often
Speaker 1: feel the same way about Michael Fastbender, And granted it's
Speaker 1: complicated by the fact that he has he has a
Speaker 1: thing for playing androids recently, but at times you're just like, no,
Speaker 1: he's just a little too handsome. There's something in human
Speaker 1: about this, this man's handsomeness, in his charm. So I
Speaker 1: want to talk about one thing that is that has
Speaker 1: given me pause on this subject, and it's going back
Speaker 1: to what we talked about at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: last episode Rogue one. Yes, So back to the c
Speaker 1: G I grandmof Tarken when I saw when I first
Speaker 1: saw Rogue one, I liked a lot of things about
Speaker 1: the movie. But I did not really like the the
Speaker 1: c g I Tarken, the the almost Peter Cushing was
Speaker 1: very very good, and I really mean that, I mean
Speaker 1: shockingly good, but still not quite real to me, still
Speaker 1: kind of distracting because of how slightly off it was.
Speaker 1: I would not have mistaken it for a real person.
Speaker 1: But the other day I was talking in the office
Speaker 1: to Holly fry Who. It's Holly a Star Wars fan.
Speaker 1: She's so, she's one of the hosts of Stuff You
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class, one of our one of our
Speaker 1: podcast in the podcast family here. Yeah, she has hands
Speaker 1: down the most Star Wars knowledgeable person in the office
Speaker 1: in an office full of nerds. Yeah, I should point
Speaker 1: out that Holly has slash had like a golden ticket
Speaker 1: to go see Rogue one anytime she wanted to at
Speaker 1: the theater. What are you serious? And serious? This is? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: leget where'd that come from? I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not at that level of a fandom
Speaker 1: where I'm even offered such things. I know. So if
Speaker 1: you want to have a funny experience, go up to
Speaker 1: Holly and just like ask some really obscure random question
Speaker 1: about Star Wars where you think it could not be
Speaker 1: possible that there's an actual answer to this, like, oh,
Speaker 1: that stormtrooper on the left, where did he? What planet
Speaker 1: was he born on? Holly will have an answer. She'll
Speaker 1: be like, oh, that was actually addressed in dialogue in
Speaker 1: the Greek dub of this episode of Clone Wars. So
Speaker 1: Holly has amazing Star Wars knowledge. She is super fun
Speaker 1: to talk to about the Star Wars universe. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Holly pointed out that while a lot of people like
Speaker 1: me were saying that the c G I. Tarkan was
Speaker 1: a few pixels short of escaping the valley, then again,
Speaker 1: there were plenty of people, including some older people that
Speaker 1: she knew, who couldn't tell that it wasn't a real person.
Speaker 1: They literally they couldn't tell. Well, I'm worried about my
Speaker 1: viewing upcoming viewing of the film because I have I've
Speaker 1: been preconditioned to have a certain response to the to
Speaker 1: the Tarkan bot here. Oh, I'm sorry that we've had
Speaker 1: this discussion before you were able to see the movie
Speaker 1: for yourself. It'll be interesting being preconditioned. Will I go
Speaker 1: into it, you know, expecting an abomination, and like that
Speaker 1: the level of detail will overwhelm me and it won't matter.
Speaker 1: Or am I going to go into there and nothing
Speaker 1: is gonna fool me because I'm gonna be looking for
Speaker 1: the cracks, You know, I can. I can put myself
Speaker 1: in a mindset where I think it's possible. I might
Speaker 1: not have known that it was a c g I
Speaker 1: effect if I wasn't familiar with what to look for,
Speaker 1: Like if I didn't watch a lot of movies that
Speaker 1: had c g I effects in them, and if I
Speaker 1: didn't complain about c g I a lot. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: guilty is I'm guilty of that? Uh? If I wasn't
Speaker 1: aware that Peter Cushing was dead, Um, if it wasn't
Speaker 1: if I wasn't sort of prepared to see a lot
Speaker 1: of high tech c g I by virtue of the
Speaker 1: fact that I'm sitting in a theater for a Lucasfilm movie,
Speaker 1: all those things. If you took away all the context
Speaker 1: and my pre knowledge, I'm very might possibly have fallen
Speaker 1: for it. I think I might have just it might
Speaker 1: have just gone past me. If I was absorbed in
Speaker 1: the story, I might have thought, Yeah, it's kind of strange.
Speaker 1: Looking dude. But it's just a dude, and I think
Speaker 1: it gets better or worse depending on your perspective. So
Speaker 1: I have in October newspiece from BBC Asia here about
Speaker 1: a character called Saia, a computer animated character created by
Speaker 1: the Japanese husband and wife graphic design team Terry Yuki
Speaker 1: and Yuka Ishikawa. And I mentioned this one in particular
Speaker 1: because before we did this episode, I went and I
Speaker 1: looked up what can that ared a lot of the
Speaker 1: most realistic c g I character creations, the most impressive animations,
Speaker 1: this one came up, and I think this was the
Speaker 1: most impressive to me. It's probably the most photo real
Speaker 1: computer generated human I've come across so far. So Siah
Speaker 1: is supposed to be a seventeen year old Japanese student
Speaker 1: and the creators have been working on her design for
Speaker 1: a couple of years now, and as versions of Siah
Speaker 1: have been posted on the Internet, people have widely reacted
Speaker 1: with comments like I can't believe that's not a real person,
Speaker 1: and I kind of have to agree. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: these these pictures of her. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: different generations of her design up, and the most recent
Speaker 1: one just looks like a photograph of a person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I can't tell that that is not a person.
Speaker 1: I I have no recourse to critical faculties in my
Speaker 1: mind that would say no, here's where you can tell
Speaker 1: that that's not a real person. Now, at the same time,
Speaker 1: I do have to come to to come in a
Speaker 1: made earlier that that this is also a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a pretty face, it's a very standard
Speaker 1: face like this is this is leading lady material. Whereas
Speaker 1: I think it gets more problematic when you look at
Speaker 1: the character actor type figures such as Peter Cushing exactly.
Speaker 1: They have such a distinctive face, yes, and Peter Cushing.
Speaker 1: So this is one thing that helps, I think is
Speaker 1: that it's a young character who has very smooth features. Uh,
Speaker 1: Peter Cushing has a lot of cracks and crags, a
Speaker 1: lot of wrinkles, And I think that that may actually
Speaker 1: be simply having more texture on your face could make
Speaker 1: it much more difficult to make a photo real copy
Speaker 1: of you. That's entirely possible. But to get back to Saia.
Speaker 1: So in October of last year, the Artist's debuted the
Speaker 1: first animated clip of Siah, which they created using motion
Speaker 1: capture technology, and they debuted at a Japanese consumer electronics show.
Speaker 1: I watched this footage, and I think Maury's distinction about
Speaker 1: having different standards for motion and still images does apply,
Speaker 1: because while with the still image, I can't tell that's
Speaker 1: not a real person, with the short animated clip, I can.
Speaker 1: I can tell it's not a real person, but it's
Speaker 1: still very very impressive, not as absolutely photo real as
Speaker 1: the still images. But I don't know. I wonder to
Speaker 1: what extent this gap is just um that motion animation
Speaker 1: is a bigger technical project, it takes more investment and
Speaker 1: money and all that um, And to what extent the
Speaker 1: gap is within the viewers mind? Essentially, to what extent
Speaker 1: it's caused by the fact that the climb out of
Speaker 1: the uncanny valley is steeper if you're moving. Now. I
Speaker 1: know we're not talking about robots here, but this, of course,
Speaker 1: this brings up the thought that as where as we
Speaker 1: attempt to conquer this in the realm of humanoid robotics,
Speaker 1: you're gonna inevitably have situations where oh, it looks just
Speaker 1: like a person that it's walking down the street, but
Speaker 1: if it climbs stairs, there you go it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: edge to oh nine, there it lays in the air,
Speaker 1: but maybe there would be something telling like, oh, it
Speaker 1: looks like a human most of the time. But they're
Speaker 1: gonna be certain movements, certain environmental reactions that are just
Speaker 1: not going to hold up to scrutiny, right, So, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Looking at these things, looking at Tarkan in
Speaker 1: Rogue one, looking at Siah, I think it's clear that
Speaker 1: we're getting closer and closer to really bridging the gap
Speaker 1: on indistinguishable photo real humanity and computer animation. Whether you'd
Speaker 1: call that an uncanny value or not. Obviously this is
Speaker 1: a related but maybe different issue. What we're definitely drawing
Speaker 1: near is that peak of reality where there are synthetically
Speaker 1: generated images of humans that you can't tell from the
Speaker 1: real thing. And since things in the uncanny value are creepy,
Speaker 1: I think we usually just assume that overcoming it is
Speaker 1: a good thing, right, like designs getting better? Uh, and't
Speaker 1: it kind of cool that we can generate these photo
Speaker 1: real images without without actually having to photograph someone. But
Speaker 1: I'm not so sure that's a good thing. I think
Speaker 1: we should maybe think about the implications of this, like
Speaker 1: what would happen in the world where human simulations, especially
Speaker 1: computer animation, can reliably climb up that second peak. So
Speaker 1: we are going to take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we will go beyond the Uncanny Valley.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. You know, I'm glad you brought
Speaker 1: up this idea of you know, is it a bad thing?
Speaker 1: Is it a good thing? It does remind me of
Speaker 1: a fabulous book that came out a few years back.
Speaker 1: I think I just referenced it in our Sex Spots
Speaker 1: episode toddled The wind Up Girl by Paolo bag Um.
Speaker 1: It's a near future science fiction tale, just really a
Speaker 1: wonderful novel, very fun. But the wind up Girl in
Speaker 1: question is a essentially a sex Spot character. It goes
Speaker 1: you know that that ends up rebelling, and you have
Speaker 1: sort of a typical narrative with her. But they call
Speaker 1: her a wind up girl because she's she's she's very
Speaker 1: convincing as a humanoid, except that her skin pours are
Speaker 1: too small and she has an intentionally herky jerky movement
Speaker 1: to uh to as she walks around. That they did
Speaker 1: so that she could not be mistaken as a person.
Speaker 1: So that so that apparently, like all the I think
Speaker 1: they were called the new people and some in some
Speaker 1: cases so that the new people could not be mistaken
Speaker 1: for the old people. Whoa. It reminds me of how
Speaker 1: they had to add artificial sounds to electric cars for
Speaker 1: safety purposes, because the cars are too quiet, they can
Speaker 1: really sneak up on you from behind, so they had
Speaker 1: to make them rumble a little bit. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's an apt comparison. So here's a question for you, Robert,
Speaker 1: what is the gold standard of evidence that somebody did something?
Speaker 1: Imagine you're on a jury. I'm the defendant. I've been
Speaker 1: accused of offering a cash bribe to a police officer
Speaker 1: if she'll me borrow her gun for five minutes. She says,
Speaker 1: I did it. I plead not guilty. What what's the
Speaker 1: best evidence to convince you that I really did that. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not human memory, because if we've touched on many
Speaker 1: times before, human memory is fallible and uh, and it's
Speaker 1: a legitimate problem when it comes to to eyewitness testimony.
Speaker 1: But when the eyewitness is a video camera digital camera
Speaker 1: that has a long photographic evidence as well to certain
Speaker 1: degrees like this has been held up as the gold standard.
Speaker 1: I mean assuming the footage is clear enough that the
Speaker 1: individual's face is visible. All of that. Uh Like even
Speaker 1: in our science fiction right, we have so many examples
Speaker 1: of like on Star Trek. Again, there would be scenes
Speaker 1: where the card would command it we zoom in and enhance,
Speaker 1: and it was never questioned that there were any problems
Speaker 1: with the enhancing of the image. It was just something
Speaker 1: that was done. It's like, oh, yeah, the image is enhanced,
Speaker 1: and now we see exactly who the killer is. So
Speaker 1: we should look at this this booming new research field.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't booming. I just mean there are some papers
Speaker 1: on it, okay, called facial reenactment. So this employs some
Speaker 1: of the same techniques that you would see used in
Speaker 1: UH in studios. If if people are doing motion capture
Speaker 1: for c g I characters in movies and video games,
Speaker 1: you have an actor performer who puts on special gear
Speaker 1: and a special environment surrounded by lights and cameras, and
Speaker 1: the performer acts out motions. These motions are captured from
Speaker 1: multiple angles and different lighting conditions, and then they're translated
Speaker 1: by a computer into the motions of a c g
Speaker 1: I character. You could make a c g I me
Speaker 1: that was doing all the same things I did with
Speaker 1: my body. But what if instead of a c g
Speaker 1: I character, you used captured motion to manipulate existing video
Speaker 1: or images of a real person, not a c g
Speaker 1: I character. This technology is already in development today, and
Speaker 1: one example is the research being done under the heading
Speaker 1: as I said, of facial reenactment. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of papers along with accompanying video demonstrations by a group
Speaker 1: of researchers based out of Stanford, out of the Max
Speaker 1: Plank Institute for Informatics and the University of Erlanga, Nuremberg,
Speaker 1: and in their own words quote, we present a method
Speaker 1: for the real time transfer of facial expressions from an
Speaker 1: actor in a source video to an actor in a
Speaker 1: target video, thus enabling the ad hoc control of the
Speaker 1: facial expressions of the target actor. And so if you
Speaker 1: haven't seen video of this, you should look it up.
Speaker 1: Try facial reenactment video. If you have sufficient sample video
Speaker 1: of your target, you can use a regular camera to
Speaker 1: project new facial expressions, including mouth movements which form the
Speaker 1: shapes of words, onto your your target in your video.
Speaker 1: So I could take video of Robert talking if I
Speaker 1: had all this technology, If I could take video of
Speaker 1: Robert talking, and then I could film myself saying how
Speaker 1: Halloween five is the best entry in the Halloween franchise,
Speaker 1: and then map that onto Robert's face to make his
Speaker 1: lips say those words, to make his face move along
Speaker 1: with my face as it's being recorded. And in the
Speaker 1: demonstrations of this it looks nearly photo real. They do
Speaker 1: it with with public figures, making them move their faces around,
Speaker 1: move their lips to say things. In some cases, I
Speaker 1: think the average observer already would not be able to
Speaker 1: tell the difference in this video, and in fact that
Speaker 1: a similar thing appears to be happening with voice, this
Speaker 1: thing you might have read about last year, this thing
Speaker 1: Adobe Voco, where they came out with this announcement that
Speaker 1: Adobe is working on software where you can take a
Speaker 1: twenty minute sample of your audio to learn from. If
Speaker 1: you've got a recording of somebody talking for twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: I can take it make a recording of you saying
Speaker 1: things you never said in your own voice. I wanna.
Speaker 1: I seem to remember that before his death, Roger Ebert
Speaker 1: was involved with the project with some of this technology,
Speaker 1: the idea of being that, of course he had lost
Speaker 1: his his availability to talk due to illness, But there
Speaker 1: was so much Roger Ebert audio out there from all
Speaker 1: of his years as a as a as a film
Speaker 1: critic and a TV personality that they had this they had,
Speaker 1: they had everything they needed to enable him to say
Speaker 1: anything new. Yeah, and that that explores the totally non
Speaker 1: nefarious aspect of this. I mean, I I don't think
Speaker 1: people who are pursuing these lines of research are just
Speaker 1: trying to create a world where we can fake video
Speaker 1: evidence of things. But wouldn't that be a wonderful thing
Speaker 1: for somebody who lost their capacity for speech they had
Speaker 1: recordings of their voice to be able to create a
Speaker 1: text to speech voice box that could speak with their
Speaker 1: own voice. That's amazing, That's kind of beautiful. But there
Speaker 1: are these other ways of looking at this. And the
Speaker 1: authors also that they point out that, you know, they
Speaker 1: they in their own defense, they're like, look, we're not
Speaker 1: trying to create a world where people can fake video.
Speaker 1: We also try to show how you can detect altered video.
Speaker 1: So that's another thing they're trying to explore and make public.
Speaker 1: Because you know, they're not the only people pursuing this research. Obviously,
Speaker 1: people all over the place are doing stuff like this,
Speaker 1: and stuff like this has been in the use, has
Speaker 1: been in use in the movie industry for years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it makes me think that what you would
Speaker 1: need to go for is the equivalent of a water mark.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what that watermark would be and
Speaker 1: what form it would take, but it does make me think, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to reach a point where any kind of
Speaker 1: footage has to have the watermark of authenticity otherwise doubt
Speaker 1: will be cast upon it. Yeah. I'm concerned about the
Speaker 1: idea of living in a world where you can make
Speaker 1: very convincing looking fake video evidence of things, and not
Speaker 1: just because of the specific example of somebody can make
Speaker 1: a video of me or somebody I like, you know,
Speaker 1: saying or doing something that they didn't do. It's not
Speaker 1: just the specifics. It's the general degray eating of our
Speaker 1: trust in the ability to look at things and know
Speaker 1: that they're true. Yeah. I mean, we look at the
Speaker 1: current news cycle and there's been a lot of discussion
Speaker 1: about the reliability of information, of so called fake news. Uh,
Speaker 1: the idea that you read, do you reach this point
Speaker 1: where nobody knows what to trust anymore? End of just
Speaker 1: trusting nothing and you already know this because you don't
Speaker 1: trust any weird looking picture of somebody you see, right,
Speaker 1: because you know what can be done with photoshop. We're
Speaker 1: already there with still images. Photoshop is is basically in
Speaker 1: many contexts become a verb for for the the distortion
Speaker 1: of truth. But what what if we had photoshop to
Speaker 1: undermine moving video evidence to the same extent that photoshop
Speaker 1: has undermined still images. I mean, this is what a
Speaker 1: lot of these viral fake news stories are based on,
Speaker 1: is a photoshopped image. If you go to Snopes or
Speaker 1: something and you look at what a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of what they're debunking is, it's just an image that
Speaker 1: aims to be real of somebody doing something, and they
Speaker 1: have to track down where it came from. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: difficult to imagine what that what would slash will be
Speaker 1: like when we reach that point to where there's where
Speaker 1: where video, even digital footage is no longer the gold
Speaker 1: standard it was. I mean, I think it's actually a
Speaker 1: very important project to maintain a version of the Uncanny Valley,
Speaker 1: to to help people find a way to all to
Speaker 1: separate real video evidence from fake video evidence of things,
Speaker 1: to understand that there are things you can look for
Speaker 1: that separate real moving imagery from falsified or synthetic moving imagery. Now,
Speaker 1: one way you can approach this is to do what
Speaker 1: the authors of this research I was talking about do
Speaker 1: is they say, look, here are things that are are
Speaker 1: signs that video has been manipulated. And that's one thing.
Speaker 1: And maybe there will be a lot of experts on
Speaker 1: this in the future, like it could be a whole
Speaker 1: field of people who are just there to have expertise
Speaker 1: in authenticating purportedly real video of you doing things or not. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then on the other hand, we could hope that there
Speaker 1: is in fact an adaptive response in our discernment in general.
Speaker 1: And this is where I want to go to the
Speaker 1: concept of an of the uncanny wall. So a paper
Speaker 1: in the International Journal of Arts and Technology, authored by
Speaker 1: Tinwell Grimshawn Williams offers this interesting counter hypothesis to the
Speaker 1: uncanny Valley. And I want to emphasize again we've sort
Speaker 1: of shifted back and forth between the uncanny valley itself
Speaker 1: in terms of what causes negative affinity and then over
Speaker 1: slightly just to the issue of nearing photo realism or not.
Speaker 1: So keep in mind the difference in those subjects, but
Speaker 1: they proposed this idea of the uncanny wall. To put
Speaker 1: it succinctly, they proposed that quote, increasing technological sophistication in
Speaker 1: the creation of realism for humanlike virtual characters is matched
Speaker 1: by increasing technological discernment on the part of the viewer.
Speaker 1: In other words, as humanoid characters become more real, our
Speaker 1: standards for what looks realistic go up. And I do
Speaker 1: think they're just anecdotally personally that I think there's some
Speaker 1: support for this, and I kind of hope this is
Speaker 1: true so we can avoid this world where all video
Speaker 1: evidence is in question. Because I immediately think, right now,
Speaker 1: I've got I've got antenna for photoshopped images, unlike I
Speaker 1: had ten years ago. I think stuff that would look
Speaker 1: obviously photoshop to me today would have fooled me ten
Speaker 1: years ago. I think I've simply adapted. And another thing
Speaker 1: is it makes me flashback to the early days of
Speaker 1: c G I in movies and like the thirty two
Speaker 1: bit video game era, or think about like PlayStation one
Speaker 1: games now. Back then, I remember looking at games for
Speaker 1: the original PlayStation and thinking, Wow, that looks so real,
Speaker 1: and you try and play him. Now and it's painful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't blocky polygons. People's faces have all these sharp corners.
Speaker 1: It's it's hilarious. Uh, there was some kind of geometrical
Speaker 1: nightmare world everything was taking place in where there's just
Speaker 1: lots of sharp angles. But at the time it looked
Speaker 1: so real to me. And another fun trick is go
Speaker 1: back and read movie reviews for movies with bad c
Speaker 1: g I from the nineties. Professional movie reviewers at the time,
Speaker 1: we're often praising the effects. One example is like the
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat movie, the original Mortal Kombat movie. Remember this.
Speaker 1: You can find reviews at the time where people are like, well,
Speaker 1: the stories then an immature but dazzling special effects. Now
Speaker 1: even mentioning those special effects conjures a kind of delirious hilarity.
Speaker 1: You just start laughing when you think about the c
Speaker 1: g I in Mortal Kombat. But that being said, the
Speaker 1: gore pup it was above approach just looks really good.
Speaker 1: It did have kind of nasty, beady eyes, kind of
Speaker 1: crypt keep keeper asked, Yeah, oh yeah, it was like
Speaker 1: a very it was like a bloated, buffed up crypt
Speaker 1: kicker at the buff But yeah, it's so ugly. It
Speaker 1: provokes uncontrollable laughter, But at the time people were like,
Speaker 1: dazzling looks amazing. Uh. So it makes me think that
Speaker 1: I hope that there is something to this, this idea
Speaker 1: that these authors have that as things continue to chase
Speaker 1: photo realism, as synthetic imagery of humans gets closer and
Speaker 1: closer to the real thing, we just get more and
Speaker 1: more attuned to the minute problems with him with them
Speaker 1: and never really get fully fooled. Well. I have two
Speaker 1: thoughts here, One on the whole watermark thing. Maybe it
Speaker 1: would be some sort of a Bitcoin type of authentication
Speaker 1: system that would be in place. The other is maybe
Speaker 1: you have to go beyond the real may be safe
Speaker 1: for a head of state to appear in a video
Speaker 1: and it'd be authentic. They have to appear as an
Speaker 1: as a computer generated avatar so advanced that it is
Speaker 1: that it is beyond the ability of any like non
Speaker 1: state production or company to create like something I'm I'm
Speaker 1: something that at this point in what would be their past,
Speaker 1: I cannot even conceive of like a I don't know,
Speaker 1: like a five dimensional unfolding c G I god being. Uh,
Speaker 1: because how he's gonna fake that? You can fake a person,
Speaker 1: but good luck faking the fifth dimension hole of Avatar
Speaker 1: of Vishnu. Okay, like like the algorithms for faking a
Speaker 1: person with a lot of photo and an audio visual
Speaker 1: cues to sample from. If you've got a lot of
Speaker 1: footage out there, you could simulate that person. But you
Speaker 1: couldn't simulate this brand new creation that is it requires
Speaker 1: you know, supercomputers to generate. And yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: probably built from the bottom up with completely alien is
Speaker 1: theology and movements. Just a thought. That's kind of a
Speaker 1: crazy idea, but I like it. Well that's what I'm
Speaker 1: here for with the crazy ideas. I don't know. Have
Speaker 1: you got anything else, Robert, any anything else you can
Speaker 1: think of to save us from the future of uh
Speaker 1: synthetic human imagery? Oh you know, I could sit around
Speaker 1: here all day and talk about the c g I
Speaker 1: monsters and UH and Uncanny Valley and films and video
Speaker 1: games and whatnot, But you know, we'll have to what
Speaker 1: to save that for another time, maybe save some of
Speaker 1: it for trailer talk, which will If you're listening to
Speaker 1: this on a Thursday, hopefully you can tune in tomorrow
Speaker 1: around eleven am on our Facebook page, like our Facebook page.
Speaker 1: While you're at it, follow us there, but tune into
Speaker 1: a little discussion of trailers that are associated with the
Speaker 1: Uncanny Valley. Oh yeah, and in the meantime, heading over
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