Random robotic reflections

Have you heard of the "Uncanny Valley"? It's a theory about people's reactions to robots. People can't relate to robots if they look nothing like humans, and we find them cute if they look slightly like humans... but the closer they get to looking exactly like humans, the more disturbing they will seem. They stop seeming like cartoonish representations of people, and start seeming like very strange-looking, creepy real people. It's a "valley" because we can theoretically come back out of it on the other side, when we get good enough at making humanoid robots that they can't be distinguished from humans at all.

I personally apply the same theory to animals. Humans tend to find animals very unattractive if they look completely and utterly unlike humans (for example, centipedes and worms and squids). We begin to find animals attractive when they look a little more like us (lions, gazelles, eagles). We admire their beauty, and compare beautiful people to them. Yet when animals get too close to looking like humans (monkeys, chimpanzees, gorillas) we suddenly don't find them beautiful at all.

However, there is one important difference: Animals that look very much like humans do not disturb us in the same way as robots that look very much like humans. Most people do not get "creeped out" when they see a monkey or ape. We have a certain affection for them, even though we would never look at our spouses and say "You're so beautiful, you look like a gorilla." We might very well look at our children and say "You're so cute, you look like a monkey." The difference between "cute" and "beautiful" is important here; we might compare a monkey to a child, someone toward whom we feel parental affection-- but we do not compare it to someone with whom we could be "in love." This may be because monkeys and apes remind us of human children instead of human adults, with their more playful and simple nature.

And speaking of children, this is where I first found out about the "Uncanny Valley." It is graphic proof that a robot that looks like a human child is definitely not endearing in the same way as an animal that looks like a human child. Prepare to be creeped out.