WEBVTT - Into the Uncanny Valley 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.920 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:14.560 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:17.800 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:20.639 I want to take you back to a conversation we had. 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:23.360 I think it was last December. He was right after 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.800 I went to see the new, the most recent Star 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:29.680 Wars movie, Rogue one. Oh yes, uh, And I am 0:00:29.720 --> 0:00:32.040 on the cusp, the very cusp of seeing it myself 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:35.000 and waiting for it to become rent rental options. So, 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:37.480 oh it's not yet. No, still got still a week 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.320 or two out. So has everything been spoiled for you 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:43.640 so far? No? People have been a little um cooler 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:45.800 on this one. Um. I think some things are probably 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:47.960 spoiled for me, but not like that last one where 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:51.000 everybody just really felt the need to, you know, just 0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:53.239 lay it all out on social media. Let me let 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:55.200 me spoil one thing for you here and they go 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:59.280 to space and there's a war there, ye, stars among 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:01.720 the stars. But there is one thing in the movie. Okay, 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:04.080 so mild spoiler for Rogue one coming out. It's something 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:06.720 that probably everybody already knows. It's also not really about 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:09.240 the content of the movie, but just about which characters 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:12.400 you see. But if you are ready, are you ready 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:14.920 for the smild spoiler? Okay, we get to see if 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:17.679 you remember back to the original Star Wars back go 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:21.319 back to the seventies, Peter Cushing as Grand mof Tarkin, 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.440 the guy who was in fact Darth Vader's boss on 0:01:24.480 --> 0:01:29.520 the Star Him. Yeah, he's enough of this, Vada release him. 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:32.080 And we love Peter Cushing because he was in all 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.200 these old monster movies. He he goes back to the 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:37.319 Hammer movies. He was. He was Dr Frankenstein, like the 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:40.120 villainous Dr Frankenstein of the Hammer films, and he I 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:42.759 think was the hero of the version of the Mummy 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:46.399 that has Christopher Lee as as the Mummy. Uh, the one. 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:48.360 I've got the poster for it in the house, except 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:51.840 it's the Belgian posters, so it's La Malediction de Feron. 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:56.720 But yeah, so Peter Cushing was the original Grand mof Tarkin, 0:01:56.880 --> 0:02:00.200 this bad Empire guy who was Darth Vader's ball us. 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:03.240 And the thing they do in the New Rogue One 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:07.080 is they bring him back. He's dead, he has passed away. 0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:10.560 This movie takes place a little bit before the original 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:13.600 Star Wars is supposed to have taken place, but they 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:17.160 bring this character back and they have an actor stand 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.680 in as him, but it's not just a recast role. 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:22.280 They try to make it look as if this is 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:26.200 Peter Cushing standing here delivering the lines with c g I. 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:28.480 And this is an odd choice because, all right, so 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:32.160 you're gonna have Darth Vader in there, that's easy to do. 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:34.680 Darth Vader is a dude in a suit, voiced by 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:37.880 James Earl Jones. James Earl Jones is still alive, so 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:40.720 you can check that one off the list. But Grandma Tarkin, 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:43.720 like you said, uh that the actor is dead. So 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:45.640 it seems to me like the first easiest thing to 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:47.440 do is just don't have those scenes. If you know 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:51.120 it's gonna be problematic, don't even mess with it, or um, 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:54.919 just use an actual living actor such as Wayne pie 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.320 Graham who played him in Revenge of the Sith. Or 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:00.720 go with Ben Cross, who's another actor that I've seen 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:03.680 over the years brought up as potential Tarkan casting, or 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.280 head go with Ralph Finds, Like, clearly you have the 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:09.480 money to throw down the well of expensive c g 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:11.920 I equipment. Just go ahead and hire Ralph Finds. I 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:15.600 know he's pricy, but he's great and the consummate evil Brett. Yeah, 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:17.920 he even kind of looks like a younger Peter Cushing. 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:20.680 He's got that same kind of angular face, like the 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:24.000 thin long face with the jaw and the scowl. It's 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:27.800 all there. And it's not like fans of various franchise 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:30.760 are not clearly cool with recasting. It's not like we're 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:34.280 gonna be thrown into, you know, a traumatic spin, because 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:37.520 you can look to a Game of Thrones, James Bond, Twilight, 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.680 Harry Potter, etcetera, like we we get it. We can 0:03:40.800 --> 0:03:43.640 roll with a recast. Now. I want to go into 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:47.680 completely different directions thinking about this c g I grandmof Tarken. 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:52.560 One is that I didn't like it in the movie. Okay, 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:55.320 I saw it and I was just like, don't want this. 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:57.920 It pulled me out of the movie. It made me 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:01.240 stop being in the story and just thinking about how 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:03.800 did they do that? I don't On one hand, it 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:07.240 looked great, Like when you see the movie, I think 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:10.280 you will kind of have to agree. It's unless I'm 0:04:10.280 --> 0:04:14.160 missing something. It's the best c g I simulation of 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:17.760 a real person that I've ever seen, Like, it looks amazing, 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.720 but it still looks not quite good enough that I 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:24.159 can just accept it and go with it. I kept 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:28.240 continually thinking, like, what am I looking at? It's almost 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:31.320 really him, but it's not quite really him, and it 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:35.039 made me feel icky. So in this it made you 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:37.880 descend into what we've come to know as a as 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:41.120 a as a species as the Uncanny Valley. Right, So 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:43.240 today is going to be the first of two episodes 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:45.359 we want to do about the Uncanny Valley, And this 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:47.919 first one we wanted descend into the Uncanny Valley, but 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:50.520 not just talk about it in terms of the standard 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:53.039 pop culture phenomenon, because this is one of those side 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.200 tech concepts that is totally filtered down into the mainstream. 0:04:56.279 --> 0:05:00.280 Everybody talks about the Uncanny Valley. It's a totally norm mole, 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:04.400 ground level pop culture phenomenon now, especially with as much 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:06.360 bad C g I as we encounter in the movie. 0:05:06.839 --> 0:05:09.479 But there it's also a scientific field of study. It's 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:12.279 something that people are looking into with empirical research to 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:14.960 try to figure out does it really exist, If it 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:17.800 does really exist, what causes it, what can be done 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:19.680 about it? So we want to look at it from 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:22.719 both of these angles today, right, So we should probably 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:25.679 roll through some just fun examples of this. We're gonna 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:27.600 try and not to go too long on this. If 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.000 we do, we'll cut it and save it for trailer talk. 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:32.960 Either way, we'll probably do a Facebook live trailer talk 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:37.040 on an upcoming Friday about some of these movies. Okay, 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:38.880 So I want to go back to a much earlier 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:42.480 experience for me, Robert, did you see The Mummy Returns 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:45.120 in two thousand one? Remember this one? I don't think 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:47.480 I saw The Mummy Returns. I saw the Money and 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:50.640 I remember digging it at the time, but not not 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:52.880 the old hammer one or the Universal one. No, no, 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:55.479 the yeah, the the the re the reboot of the Money. 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:59.440 Is his name, Brendan Frasier. Yeah, and what Arnold Voslo? 0:05:59.600 --> 0:06:02.120 Yeah he was he. I I enjoyed him as they 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:04.120 kind of brought in some of these aspects of the 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:07.839 tragic Mummy figure, which I liked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:10.480 But in two thousand one we got the Scorpion King. 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:12.960 This is a character that appears in the Mummy Returns 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:14.640 and he's pretty much if you want to picture it, 0:06:14.640 --> 0:06:16.520 if you haven't seen the movie. Actually you should look 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:18.640 up video of this. We're gonna tell you to go 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:20.760 look up images and video quite a few times in 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:24.040 these episodes because some visual aids will help. But if 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:26.840 you want to picture it, picture the concept of a centaur, 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:31.000 except replace the horse parts with scorpion parts and some 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:34.600 other random arthropod bits, and the man part on top 0:06:34.680 --> 0:06:38.919 is Dwayne the Rock Johnson. Except it's not Dwayne the 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:41.400 Rock Johnson. There's a there's a bit of a problem 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:44.480 with the rocks. So the corpion Corpion, the Scorpion King 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:49.360 scuttles into action in the film, and you can tell 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:52.520 immediately something is wrong because it's not just the rock. 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:56.080 It's this c g I upper body designed to look 0:06:56.160 --> 0:06:58.640 like the rock. It's supposed to be him, but it 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:01.679 doesn't look right. It looks like somebody took the rock, 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:05.680 skinned him, and then took the skin suit and then 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:09.039 boiled it and then maybe ironed it and rubbed it 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:12.200 down with wax, and then stretched it over somebody else, 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:16.800 like a bald Crispin Glover wearing a waxed up the 0:07:16.920 --> 0:07:20.520 rock suit. And and that would be fine if that's 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:22.840 what they were going for. But I guess the disconnect 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.480 here is that clearly they wanted this to be like 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:29.400 the Rock as a scorpion center and not this um, 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:32.640 creepy in human above the nation that you've described, right, 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:35.000 And it's sort of I guess works because it's okay 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:37.280 if he's creepy, because he's a monster. But he was 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:39.920 creepy in a way that he clearly wasn't supposed to be. 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:42.800 It wasn't just that, oh he's a monster. He looks weird. 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:45.400 Something looked wrong with him. And this was at a 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:49.160 time when computer generated animations were hot, right two thousand one. 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:51.840 They seemed to be getting better all the time, and 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:55.040 yet they were terrible, producing these characters that were not 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:59.560 only not convincingly human, they were literally physically unpleasant to 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:02.320 look at. They were repulsive. Yeah, it was a period 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:05.360 when everyone was just foolishly optimistic about what we could 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:07.880 achieve with c g I, and you know, into in 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:11.080 a sense, maybe that hasn't gone away. We're still very 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:14.840 the Rogue one example, Like, clearly everyone is very optimistic 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:18.120 about how great this looked, and even though to your point, 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:21.600 it does look great, but within the context of the film, 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:24.720 something doesn't quite work. Yeah, I would say, Now for 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:26.720 some people, we can get into this more. I think, 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:29.680 especially in the next episode when we then the next one, 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:32.560 we want to try to go beyond the valley, the 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:36.320 Uncanny Valley. But I will say at this point, for 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:40.080 some people, Tarkan was not over the line or under 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:41.720 the line. I don't know where you put the line. 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:44.440 But for for some people it worked, and I do 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:46.920 think that's an interesting thing to acknowledge that while for 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:50.880 me I experienced this, uh, not to the same extent 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:53.880 as the Scorpion King, but a kind of Scorpion King revulsion, 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:56.640 not everybody did. Now, one thing about Tarkan is that 0:08:56.840 --> 0:09:00.520 the Tarkan c Jack character is correct me if I'm wrong, 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:02.640 because I have not seen it myself yet. But he 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:06.960 is interacting with human actors in this in his scenes, yeah, 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:09.400 I think so, or at least he's in a film 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:11.960 with other human actors, even if he's not sharing the 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.560 exact same scene with them. So you might think, well, 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:17.880 if you just had a movie just full of brilliant 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:20.680 looking Tarkans, maybe it would be okay. And maybe it would. 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:25.560 But some of the classic examples of Uncanny Valley happened 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:27.880 to be films that are filled with nothing but c 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:30.000 g I characters. Yeah, how about one from the same 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:32.720 year as The mom of Your Turns two thousand one, 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:35.640 If you go back to Oh Yes, Final Fantasy, The 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:41.520 Spirits Within, I remember kind of liking it. I do too. 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:43.240 It was a film that I think I kind of 0:09:43.840 --> 0:09:47.959 half watched, half worked on, like some just college coursework 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:50.760 or something just on in the background. And and maybe 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:52.520 that was the right level of immersion in it. But 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:55.080 I remember digging it. But at the same time, there 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:57.720 are a lot of dead puppet eyes in this movie. 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:00.719 Oh yeah, and it's so I saw it at the time. 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:03.520 I remember having mixed feelings about the animation, like in 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:06.079 some senses, I remember thinking, Wow, that looks so cool. 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:09.160 That again may have been a product of its time. 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:12.040 We can talk about that more, how our expectations change 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:16.240 as things go on. But also I don't know. There 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:18.320 were multiple things wrong with that movie, one of which 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:21.720 being that the last line of spoken dialogue in the movie, 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:23.600 as a friend of mine pointed out at the time, 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:29.960 was oh it's warm. Well I could I don't remember 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:31.960 the line, so I can't speak to it how well 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:36.320 it landed, But I can see that being a problem credits. Now, 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:39.720 another big one, this came out just three years later, is, 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:42.839 of course, The Polar Express. Now, when people talk about 0:10:42.840 --> 0:10:45.040 the Uncanny Valley these days, I'd say this is a 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:47.640 top three mentioned. Yeah, this is one of the defining 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:51.120 nightmares of our time now based on a wonderful children's 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:53.800 book about the magic of Christmas time. Yeah, the book 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:56.520 is wonderful, but it's certainly one of these examples. If 0:10:56.559 --> 0:10:58.800 you take a very brief children's book and you try 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:01.760 and adapt it into a a feature length motion picture, 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:05.880 that's very difficult to do. In fact, I'm really grasping 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:08.760 for an example where anybody actually pulled it off. Like, 0:11:08.800 --> 0:11:11.640 the best adaptations of children's books that come to mind 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:16.320 are all very short, uh, very short films generally. I'm 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:20.559 thinking of Dr Seus's adaptations from the seventies and eighties, 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:25.120 not The Polar Express, which is just an exercise in 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:31.400 psychic trauma brought on by just seemingly intentionally weaponized Uncanny Valley. Um, 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:35.160 you know, the soulless puppet people. I've never seen this movie, 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:37.079 but I looked up clips to see what people were 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:41.360 talking about, and oh man, they they are not kidding it. 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:44.320 I don't know how children made it through this movie. 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:48.000 It has these it has these creepy elves, It's got 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:52.360 a creepy Tom Hanks as a train conductor. Nothing seems right, 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:56.280 Everything seems like it's just about to everybody's about to 0:11:56.280 --> 0:11:59.280 start melting and screaming. Yeah. I think this is one 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:02.480 where it was a poor idea in my opinion, and 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:06.080 uh in the technology was not there to to rescue 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:08.800 the idea. Now the next one we're going to discuss though. 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:12.040 I think it was a great idea on paper, but 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:15.319 it just didn't work out on the screen. And that's 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:18.280 of course two thousand sevens Baywolf. Now as this Robert 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:21.480 Zemeckis who did this, Yeah, Robert Zemeckis helmed it. And 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:24.760 then the writing it was Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery. 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:27.920 So some you know, some some some big names just 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.160 attached and to the the ideas behind this, uh this movie, 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:34.240 and of course based on the story of Grindel and Beowulf, 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.560 which is a classic you would think, you know, hard 0:12:37.600 --> 0:12:41.760 to miss action narrative. I think the Beowolf could make 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:44.160 a really great movie if somebody did it right. Yeah, 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:46.960 I think so too. I have yet to see that movie. 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:51.319 But but but certainly has all the the potential in 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:54.040 the world. And they had a pretty cool vocal cast 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:56.240 as well, I think. And Angelina Jolie is in it 0:12:56.320 --> 0:12:59.439 as the monster's mother. They have ray Winstone as Bayolwolf. Yeah, 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:02.560 he does the voice of Beowulf, and uh, and who 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:05.199 was it that plays the monster? We were just crisp 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:09.520 now I've seen it all back home. Not one of 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:12.600 my favorite monster depictions of Grenville, by the way, But 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:15.400 he's a monster. We can get past that. But everybody 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:18.480 else in the film really has the uncanny valley that 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:20.640 going on to to a high degree. I think I 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:24.199 read a quote somewhere where film critic was talking about 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.319 how the monsters in the movie were only slightly less 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:31.319 frightening than the humans. Yeah, yeah, the humans. It just 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:35.040 it just didn't land. Now at this point you're probably thinking, well, 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:38.720 how about video games, because they're certainly when you're thinking 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:42.560 about computer animated human beings interacting with each other, staring 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:46.000 right into the camera, you think of video games. Yeah, 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:49.480 And and I think, and you know, here's here's the 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:51.360 thing here. I have to say that I haven't noticed 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:54.040 it as often these days I think a lot of 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:57.800 game animators have found ways to get around the uncanny Valley. Yeah. 0:13:58.160 --> 0:13:59.800 I don't want to get to ahead of our flow here, 0:13:59.800 --> 0:14:02.920 but I think one thing that I've noticed they sometimes 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:06.840 do is that they don't actually go for photo realism, 0:14:06.880 --> 0:14:09.120 and they go for a kind of more real than 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:13.920 real combination of like a comic book style type character illustration, 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:18.440 and then these other realistic aspects that when when you 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:21.040 look at a video game character, you would never mistake 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:24.000 it for a photograph of a person, even even one 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:27.680 that's got really good graphics. But much like the way 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:30.480 dialogue is written in films, you know, you don't want 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:34.080 to make dialogue sound like real people talk, because that 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:36.680 would be horrible to listen to, but you do want 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:40.240 to make it sound quote realistic. You don't want to 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:43.640 make your characters look too realistic in animation, but you 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:46.640 do want to make them look quote realistic. In other words, 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:50.160 they feel real. Yeah, this reminds me of a game 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:52.200 franchise that I haven't I don't think I've ever played 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:54.520 more than a demo of this, but the Gears of 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:57.480 War series. So all the people in this kind of 0:14:57.480 --> 0:14:59.600 look like like if you're gonna be critical, but you 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:02.040 might say everyone looks kind of like they're weird guerrilla people. 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:04.440 Like it was a like we're in an alternate world 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:08.880 where unrealistically huge upper bodies. Yeah, as if evolution took 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:13.520 a slightly different turn into an intelligent primates. Uh. And 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:16.480 yet they look real. They don't look like they don't 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:19.000 get an uncanny effect rolling off them, Like you know, 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:20.760 you look at them, you can see pores, you can 0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:25.680 see hair follicills. They look real, but they are but 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:29.920 that they are certainly not going for authentic human being 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:32.200 there all right, Now, I want to put out one 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:34.480 more example here before we move on, and it's a 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:39.360 rare example of uncanny valley avoidance, a very specific type 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:42.840 of uncanny valley avoidance, and that is au from a 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:46.120 fantastic stop motion short that was produced by the National 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:48.560 Film Board of Canada. And you can find this online 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:50.560 if you just do a search for it. It's Madam 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:54.880 Tutley Putly and it's a wonderful little little film, very 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:59.320 very French feel to it. Characters on a train, weirds, 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:02.800 frightening things occurring. Uh, definitely check it out. But the 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:06.520 trick to it there, these are stop motion animated characters, 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:10.040 and their eyes just feel so alive. They stare right 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:12.640 into you, and you don't you don't question for a 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:15.760 second that these are that these are people. And the 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:18.600 trick that they employed is that they used real human eyes, 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:22.280 not in a you know, depraved, evil puppet master kind 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:25.400 of way, either. They videotape the eyes of human actors 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:27.800 and then blended the footage with that of the puppets. 0:16:28.240 --> 0:16:31.480 That sounds like an incredible gambit, because that sounds like 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:34.360 that could have produced some of the worst Uncanny Valley 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:37.000 feelings ever if it went wrong. Yeah, and and I 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:38.720 don't know, there may be some people who watch this 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:41.880 short and and have the opposite effect and and think 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:44.560 that it's super creepy. I found it to be like this, 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:48.960 this interesting example of circumventing the Uncanny Valley. But I'll 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:50.680 leave it for you guys to decide. I'll include a 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:52.360 link to this one as well as some of the 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:54.480 other sources we're talking about on the landing page for 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:56.960 this episode. It's stuff to blow your mind dot com. 0:16:57.000 --> 0:16:58.760 All right, Well, we are going to take a quick 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.040 break and when we come back will get into the 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:04.120 origin of the scientific idea of the Uncanny Valley and 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:11.399 its history and research. All right, we're back. So the 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:13.919 Uncanny Valley. Where does this even come from? Right? So 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:16.600 we've already been talking about it because most people have 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:19.639 heard of this, they're somewhat familiar with it. I was 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:22.679 talking to Rachel about it though. She was saying, you know, 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:26.600 at least to her, it had this connotation of just 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:32.040 generally synthetically generated images being creepy in one way or another. 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:34.480 So maybe we should get into the specifics of the 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:37.200 origin of the idea. So let's go back to the 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:42.840 year nineteen seventy. Everything's great, Wait is it? I don't know, 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:46.639 but but everybody, everybody's looking forward to the future in 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:49.440 terms of creating humanoid robots. What are we going to 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:52.879 be able to do well? The Japanese roboticist massa Hiro 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:57.560 Mori of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He wrote a 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:00.760 paper that was published in this Japanese journal Energy that 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:05.840 coined the term uncanny Valley to describe a problem that 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:09.359 he was predicting with increasingly humanoid robots. And this was 0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:15.240 based on just some observations he'd had of of different events. 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:18.000 So you might say incidents in the progress of designing 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:21.520 humanoid robots, such as consumer electronics shows in Japan and 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:25.120 stuff like that. So what he predicted was that as 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:27.920 you had a humanoid robot, robot that looks like a 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:32.680 human and its likeness to a human increased, our attitude 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:36.560 towards them would improve. Our affinity would go up as 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.920 they became more human, until they reached a certain tipping 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:44.879 point of similarity to humans, where suddenly our affinity, our 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:50.600 friendly attitude, almost immediately shifts and plunges down into strong revulsion. 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:55.600 Being human is likable, being sort of human is likable, 0:18:55.720 --> 0:19:00.320 but being almost human is horrible and repulsive. And then 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:03.119 of course at the final end, uh you you would 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:05.040 have a real human. So you can think of the 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:08.000 uncanny valley as a phase in a graph, an X 0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:11.480 Y graph, and along the horizontal axis on the bottom, 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:14.439 you've got the degree of similarity to a human, and 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:17.000 then on the vertical axis you've got the degree of 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:20.800 our affinity for the object. And more hypothesized, this graph 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:23.240 would have these two peaks. You'd start with zero on 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:26.040 both axes, because a thing that has no human like 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:29.920 traits basically gets no human affinity response one way or another. 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:32.119 And we just don't you know, how much do you 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:35.720 really like an industrial conveyor belt. You're just sort of 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:39.960 neutral on it. But as you increase the humanity, you 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:44.720 give a robot arms or something that looks like a face, eyes, limbs, 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:48.639 you climb this gentle, gradual slope to the first peak 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:53.240 and affinity. Um, you know, and he didn't name the peak, 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:55.000 but I think we should name the peak. I think 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:58.000 this first peak should be called something like the cuteness peak. 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:01.399 That's not exactly right because it's not exactly cuteness, but 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:05.920 it's recognizing something kind of human about what you're looking at. Yeah, Like, 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:08.880 I mean, we don't have to describe cute to everyone here, 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:11.960 but certainly this is hello kitty territory, this is the 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:16.120 this is the domain of large eyed It's vaguely infant 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:19.560 or kitten like creatures that would never be mistaken for 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:22.200 human or real, but they resonate with us for a 0:20:22.280 --> 0:20:24.359 number of reasons. We could do a whole podcast infect 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:27.320 we have an old podcast episode about the science of cute. 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:31.160 Why that connects with us? Yeah, so they would include 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:33.720 that would include all kinds of robots that just kind 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:37.520 of have general, very basic faces that don't try to 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:40.520 have human skin or anything like that. That just might 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:45.440 have like kind of a mouth and some cartoonish eyes. Yeah, sure, 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:48.159 there you go. That the c three po boldly on 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:52.520 the cuteness. But at a certain point after this first speak, 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:55.480 this graph drops off steeply. So you keep going along 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:58.680 the x axis, but then the y axis drops off, 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:01.880 not just down to zero, but far below zero, into 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.199 the negative affinity range. And this part of the graph 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:08.760 is the uncanny valley. As the similarity to a real 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:12.520 human continues to increase near a dent. In other words, 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:16.600 as it becomes indistinguishable from a real human, our affinity 0:21:16.680 --> 0:21:20.280 sharply shoots back up the second peak toward reality. So 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:23.320