On Game AI In The Uncanny Valley 87
An anonymous reader writes "Normally, the Uncanny Valley theory is used to critique graphical realism in games, but it also applies to AI. Therefore, designer David Hayward examines AI's Uncanny Valley over at Gamasutra, citing games from Valve's Half-Life 2 to the interactive drama Façade." From the article: 'There's a small minority of people who are consistently strange in particular ways... I don't mean to pick on them as a group; nearly all of us dip into such behavior sometimes, perhaps when we're upset, out of sorts, or drunk. Relative and variable as our social skills are, AI is nowhere near such a sophisticated level of interactive ability. It is, however, robotic. Monstrous and sometimes unintentionally comedic; the intersection of broken AI and spooky people is coming.'"
Uncanny valley... adaptive levels? (Score:5, Insightful)
As our technology improves to create better and better artificial representations, our ability to detect them does as well.
Humans may not fair much better. (Score:3, Insightful)
The Author Missed the point (Score:3, Insightful)
The author is missing the point of the uncanny valley. The point of the uncanny valley is the dip. If you have a non-realistic pixar-like character (The Incredibles), you empathise with them. If you have a more realistic, but not good enough character, the character gets creepier (Polar Express). Then, when it gets really good, you can empathise with them again (Hugo Weaving, i.e. Agent Smith, in the Matrix Sequels).
The author basically says "AI is hard". But he doesn't make any real argument as to there being some "valley" where as the characters get less realistic they act more believably, and as they get more realistic, they also act more believably. A much more accurate title would be "AI is a steep hill".
Re:rant on AI (Score:1, Insightful)
for example, i know if i touch a hot flame, it will burn me and it will hurt. i may not want to touch the flame, but i can decide to anyway, even against my own will/judgement/past experience and every other possible variable that can be taken into account. AI is almost the opposite. it's static. even if you were to throw in a "random" variable that ends up making the final decision between any number of choices, the fact remains that the final decision rests on the "random" variable that it is forced to use, so, its 'statically random'. there is no real choice in software. there is choice in human intelligence.
Re:The Author Missed the point (Score:3, Insightful)
I find many cutting edge AIs unnerving to interact with because when they do the wrong thing its so close to right that you wonder why it was done instead of automatically knowing that its due to flawed AI. Just like when the weird guy on the bus violates "normal" boundaries just a bit it is more creepy than the outright disassociative behavior associated with psychotic breaks.
Re:Uncanny valley... adaptive levels? (Score:4, Insightful)
The composite faces you mention are likewise on the near side of the valley. Images of faces fabricated from scratch often are likewise, with current technology, due to the fact that still images contain so much less information than moving ones. Compare modern CGI faces to those of the late 90s and you'll see how they gradually got better, climbing the near slope of the valley and becoming more believable and identify-with-able.
Re:Interesting article (Score:5, Insightful)
I still call bull (Score:5, Insightful)
E.g., let's take two sets of models which were both in the "uncanny valley" if it exists. On one end you have the extremely detailed models of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and on the other the models of EQ2 which a _lot_ of people described as "lifeless", "sterile" or other such euphemisms. I'm one of those. In fact I'd call them just disturbingly wrong, the kind where your subconscious keeps snapping out of suspension of disbelief screaming "that's not a tree!" and "that's not a human!" If an uncanny valley exists, then they're in the uncanny valley too, right?
Then something that falls in between those two points should be in the uncanny valley too, right?
Well, wrong. Oblivion for example was a lot easier to swallow than either, although detail-level-wise it's between the two.
That's called a Reductio ad absurdum [wikipedia.org] proof, where assuming X leads to the false conclusion Y.
Furthermore, if you've actually read the Uncanny Valley theory, the examples used are blatantly bogus hand-waving. E.g., yes, a zombie is disturbing, but it's bogus to claim that it's purely for aesthetic or "how much it resembles humans" reasons. There's a whole bunch of cultural and emotional meaning tied to that, and claiming that it trips people's fears just because of the "uncanny valley" effect, is like claiming that you fear a car coming at you just because the headlights look sorta uncanny like eyes.
And again, you can do a reductio ad absurdum there. The Undead in WoW are the most disturbing visually, the characters in Spirits Within are uncanny valley too, so something in between should be in the Uncanny Valley too. Yet the Wow humans and elves are considered the races that look good.
In fact the zombies are the perfect counter-example all by themselves. If lowering realism moves something out of the uncanny valley (e.g., lower polycount characters in games are less disturbing than the characters in The Spirits Within), then it should do the same for zombies. It doesn't. They're still repulsive even at Quake 1 polycounts.
Or if slight imperfections like in Spirits Within, or details like teeth on a vampire, are what makes them disturbing via an Uncanny Valley effect... then how about pointy ears on elves? Shouldn't Legolas cause the same effect? Well, bummer, he doesn't.
Etc, etc, etc.
The Uncanny Valley is one of those things that makes sense only as long as you don't actually use your brains.
Yes, there are all sorts of ways in which being different or acting not-right can trip people's suspension of disbelief. That much is obvious. But there is no single dimension measuring it, and no single Uncanny Valley graph. There are thousands of factors which can be right or awfully wrong or somewhere in between, and thousands of fears, beliefs, expectations that can be tripped by it. You can't take the average and use it as the X axis for an uncanny valley graph, because even if the average is 99% right (hence the whole should be on the right side of the valley), one single detail (e.g., "omg, they're zombies") which can be disturbing on its own.
E.g., The Spirits Within wasn't just "a littel off", it had outright bad acting. That's what tripped people's suspension of disbelief. There was no uncanny valley effect, no overall being just a little off, it's just what you'd get with human actors acting badly.
It also overlooks the problem of expectations. The Spirits Within is wrong because you expect them to be human, Toy Story or Oblivion aren't because you expect them to be respectively toys or NPCs in a computer game. You have different sets of expectations for them.
Aesop's Fables (since they keep getting mentioned as Uncanny Valley effect exam
Oh please... (Score:3, Insightful)
The logic I'm proposing is along the lines of:
- _if_ there's such an axis and the curve looks like that (i.e., with a single dip below zero), then the "uncanny valley" zone is basically an interval
- if two points are part of the same interval, then a point in the middle is part of that interval too. (E.g., taking the interval [0.5..0.9], if 0.6 is in that interval and 0.8 is in that interval, then so is 0.7.)
- point X is in that interval (e.g., X = The Spirits Within.)
- point Y is in that interval (e.g., Y = EQ2)
- point Z is between X and Y (e.g., Z = Oblivion. It does have both better models and better animations than EQ2, yet far worse than The Spirits Within.)
- then point Z should be in that Uncanny Valley interval too
- worse yet, because of the shape of that curve, Z can't end up looking better/less-disturbing than either X or Y, if both X and Y are inside that dip below zero.
And yet that's false. Z actually looks a hell of a lot better, and trips people's suspension of disbelief a lot less.
If you can find a genuine logic error in the above, please do let me know.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with the whole Uncanny Valley _bullshit_. It's easy to hand-pick examples that confirm whatever you wish, and it's easy to hand-wave any single example as to why it should fall inside or outside of it by itself. It becomes hard when you start noticing that any two points you choose, you can pick a counter-example in the middle which doesn't act that way.
The whole Uncanny Valley bullshit is itself based on two fallacies, since you brought those up:
1. Biased Sample [wikipedia.org]. You can pretend to prove anything if you're free to hand-pick only the examples that confirm it.
2. Not as much a logical as a mathematical fallacy: being fuzzy enough to be able to redefine the curve as to explain anything you want explained. Any single example you can choose, someone can (and will) handwave and massage its position or the shape of the curve to justify that it really fits their preconception. Since you can't put a clear number and say "zombies are 75.61% realistic", it just allows people to handwave where they should be placed to confirm an unproven preconception.
It's a pity that the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy name is already taken, because it's pretty much the perfect illustration of what the proponents of the Uncanny Valley bullshit constantly do. Any single point you choose, they can just use a ton of sophistry and handwaving to move the point or the curve to explain it. It's literally painting the target around the bullet hole, instead of honestly testing a hypothesis.
3. Often using a Inconsistent Comparison [wikipedia.org] or an Incomplete Comparison [wikipedia.org] fallacy to create the illusion of that unidimensional scale where one doesn't exist. Every single example is judged by whatever different criterion fits the preconception, avoiding the aspects which would make it a lot harder to squeeze in a single variable.
Well, I'm attacking just that stupid handwaving, and especially number 2. I'm using two points to freakin' anchor that curve already and show that a third can't possibly fit it.