All The More Reason

In our celebratory first Interesting Idea of the Week segment, we have the Uncanny Valley. The idea, in brief, is that once a robot reaches a certain likeness to humans our reaction to it will turn from empathy to disgust as the dissimilarities draw our attention more than their similarities. However, if robots reach a new level of likeness than our empathy will grow again. And so the gap between these two levels of empathy is the “Uncanny Valley”.

I have no idea how accurate this idea is. However, as an idea to float around at the theatre bar – gin and tonic in hand – during the intermission of a play, it’s an eight out of ten.

J.S.