Inside Computing and the Uncanny Valley

This week's blog post is in response to Turing's article Computing Machinery and Inelligence and Mori's article on The Uncanny Valley.

Both these articles are fairly short reads, which is great for me this week because I had to do a lot more reading to finish a literature review for a big group research paper in another class. For its length, Turig's piece seemed quite densely packed with information. Still, Turig does a fine job giving the reader some insight into the process of digital computing as a mindless machine views it even if the examples he used seemed a little bit far fetched.

For two pages, Mori's piece also turned out to be an engaging and fascinating read. Now, the "uncanny valley" is a concept which I already have some vague passing familiarity with as I've read several CRACKED.com articles on the subject already. However, this piece does raise one interesting question for me. Are we still dipping into "the uncanny valley" if we are using it to help people?

According to my own completely subjective view of  where "the uncanny valley" begins, we don't really get into it until we stop using things like robotics and prosthetics to help others live more fulfilling and empowering lives and until we use them to create a full fledged humanoid form.

For instance, creating prosthetic robotic limbs for a war veteran doesn't quite bring us into the "uncanny valley" to me. That would just be an arm or a leg and not a full human figure. Also, the vet would truly appreciate this as it would allow him to continue his life as he once knew it with renewed vigor and serves as an inspiration of others, I would imagine. However, building a fully functional human robot just because you can or just to see how close you can get it to the true human form or true human companionship...now, THAT hurtles us straight on head first into the valley if you ask me.

I leave you now with this CRACKED piece explaining the whole concept of the "monkeysphere" which I had bought up in class in case you would like to learn more about it. Have a great week and I hope you enjoyed reading this post just as much as I enjoyed writing it!