Generative AI's uncanny valley: Problem or opportunity?

Thoughtworks Technology Podcast

Thoughtworks

Careers, Business, 907234, Technology

4.7 • 53 Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With the rise of generative AI, the concept of the uncanny valley — where human resemblance unsettles, disturbs or disgusts — is more relevant than ever. But is it a problem that technologists need to tackle? Or does it offer an opportunity for greater thoughtfulness about the ways generative AI is being built, deployed and used?

In this episode of the Technology Podcast, host Lilly Ryan is joined by Srinivasan Raguraman to discuss generative AI's uncanny valley and explore how it might offer a model for thinking through our expectations about generative AI outputs and effects. Taking in everything from the experiences of end users to the mental models engineers bring to AI development, listen for a wide-ranging dive into the implications of the uncanny valley in our experience of generative AI today.

Read Srinivasan's recent article (written with Ken Mugrage): https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/24/1106110/reckoning-with-generative-ais-uncanny-valley/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to this episode of the ThoughtWorks Technology podcast.
0:11.3	I'm your host, Lily Ryan, and I'm speaking to you from the lands of the Warrangeri people
0:15.3	in Melbourne, Australia.
0:17.1	Today, I'm talking with Shrini Raghuraman, a principal technologist at ThoughtWorks, about a piece
0:21.9	that he recently co-authored with our other podcast co-host, Ken McRage in the MIT Review.
0:28.7	This piece is called Reckoning with Generative AI's Uncanny Valley, and today we're going to
0:33.8	unpack a lot of these concepts and how they interact with generative AI tooling
0:38.6	in the way that we're seeing it today. Surini, welcome to the show. Thanks. Thanks for having me here.
0:44.0	What is the Uncannine Valley? I've heard this is a term I've heard a lot, but I've usually
0:50.5	heard it in the context of robotics or animation or something like that.
0:54.4	How does it apply to the collection of technologies that we're calling AI these days?
0:59.9	Yeah, like the concept of Ancannuali, like you said,
1:03.1	like you probably commonly associate with robotics,
1:05.9	but we have seen this kind of appear in other terms as well, right?
1:09.6	For example, in the past, when we are developing mobile application,
1:13.2	we have been seeing that when you're building a mobile app,
1:18.0	like a lot of often teams take a shortcut, like, okay, I have a website,
1:21.4	can I wrap this into an app and release it?
1:24.4	Right.
1:25.0	When the users use that app, they can quickly, like, for mostly it's functional,
1:30.0	but they can also quickly at time feel cheated, right? Like in the sense, like, the experience
1:33.6	doesn't match what it should be matching with the ecosystem. So that's like the, that's the
	...

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