UPDATE: PC World just ran a story about technology from Image Metrics, which does high-end facial animation. The story isn't much but the video is surprising; see if you can tell her face is computer-generated.

The Uncanny Valley

There's a name for just about every phenomenon you can come up with, and this essay focuses on something that's no exception: The Uncanny Valley. The concept of the Uncanny Valley presents the idea that when it comes to relating to others, people are willing to accept only a certain amount of difference between what's "normal" and what's not. The "valley" refers to a trough in a graph that plots positive human reaction ("familiarity") as a function of a robot's lifelikeness (though it can apply to anything that approximates a human or indeed, any entity with which we instinctively empathize). The following graph illustrates the valley:

Don't kick the robot

Let me illustrate this with a video, and pay particular attention to the guy kicking the robot about 35 seconds in:

Two things struck me about this video: First, that's an amazingly good prototype for a dog-like walking pack-bot or whatever they're going to call it. The motion and the robot's balance are very similar to what you would expect from a large dog. But related to that (probably because of it, actually) the thing that really struck me was that when the man kicked it and it stumbled, I felt sympathy for the robot. As soon as I watched the robot recover its balance after being kicked, I started to become a little uneasy about the robot's appearance and behavior. It had enough dog-ness that I thought differently about it. Not quite a dog, but not quite completely not-a-dog, either. I didn't like watching it get mis-treated, despite the fact that it is very clearly a machine.

We're generally not bothered by looking at things that are different enough from what we're accustomed to, such as a cartoon character that is meant to be a human. According to the uncanny valley, we're fine with cartoon representations of people because there's really no chance we could mistake them for a true human. But in a case such as a super-lifelike robotic figure that seems almost completely human, we tend to experience feelings of repulsion because they're almost but not quite completely human. I speculate that we feel repulsion because almost-lifelike is like a "broken person" (e.g. diseased, crippled, etc.) whose similarity invites us to connect in an empathic, human way but whose difference impedes our ability to empathize and connect with them (or at least makes us sense that ability will be impeded). We feel an instinctual urge to connect with other humans, but in cases of the uncanny valley, we feel unable to fully make the connection because of some factor that makes an entity different enough that we sense a connection cannot be made. So looking back at the graph, as we move from the right-hand side where we see "healthy person", our familiarity drops off pretty quickly as we lose of human likeness.

Accelerated brains

Right now, our brains operate pretty much at the same rate and with the same basic capabilities (with the exception of people who are afflicted with various disorders). But in the not-too-distant future, we may be able to enhance our brains' capacities with increased speed or creativity, better memory, etc. Let's briefly consider what this will mean to our acceptance of one another.

Consider people who have debilitating mental diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis or Down's Syndrome, or people who have sustained brain injuries and cannot behave at a level of normal function. Normal-functioning people are often at least uneasy around them (at least initially, though sometimes ongoing). Now consider the same type of difference as it applies to a person whose performance is enhanced, rather than impaired: When we start changing the way our minds work (even if it's as simple as just making them faster), we're likely to develop some social alienation but we'll also start experiencing more gut-level repulsion, unless the entity is dissimilar enough to get beyond the valley.

So what do you call a human who's ceased to be similar to humanity at large, in fundamental ways and to such a degree that they can be perceived as another type of entity altogether? That's a post-human. Joel Garreau discusses post-humanism in "Radical Evolution", by illustrating the difference a college student feels between herself and her classmates who are "enhanced". They can exchange information using wireless networking built into their bodies, heal themselves faster by focusing their minds on their injuries, and they can just plain out-think their MOSH (Mostly Organic/Original Substrate Humans, a.k.a. traditional biological) counterparts.

Among other challenges, possibly the most important or nagging one will be this: Given that you have the means of doing so, will you choose to enhance your mind to keep pace with the minds of the post-humans? I ended my Singularity Primer article by saying,

"We'll have lots of choices to make, and we'll need to start forming attitudes about the areas of our lives that will be amplified or affected by the astoundingly fast and fundamental changes brought on in the Singularity."

This is one of those things.