Throughout the article, "Uncanny Valley", Masahiro describes the importance of the resemblance of robot looking like human beings. At the beginning of the article, Masahiro describes a graph which exemplifies different degrees of moving or still humanlikeness linked to familiarity. Healthy people are at a high point or positive end of the graph; whereas dead corpse and zombies are in "uncanny valley" or the negative end of the graph. He claims that we are more likely to connect with the robbot rather than thinking that it is computerized. Masahiro states, "Human beings lie at the final goal of robotics, which is why we make an effort to build humanlike robots" (Masahiro). Even though the robots' built with metal material, the makers paint over the robot to give them human features. This allows us to feel more comfortable with the robot because it does not look too computerized. Masahiro talks about the importance of the features, "If programmed properly to generate humanlife movements, we can enjoy some sense of familiarity" (Masahiro). If the robot moves and resembles a computer than we look at it like it is just a machine and we are less comfortable with it. The author also relates the robots to handicapped peoples prosthetic arms or legs. We have come a long way with prosthetic arms and legs making them look completely real. This allows people without an arm or leg feel like they fit in with the rest of society. However, Masahiro believes that the prosthetic arms and legs fall into the uncanny category as they do not qualify as being healthy. Masahiro says, "So in this case, the appearance is quite human like, but the familiarity is negative" (Masahiro).This means that prosthetics may look real; however, it is still strange to society.
Nice precis of the Masuhiro. It sounds as if you are sometimes implicitly countering his argument with a more life-affirming sense of prosthetics and A.I. Mark
ReplyDelete