Are people wary of androids?

A recent study claims yes. Human replicas resemble and act almost like human beings, but they elicit feelings of displeasure. Masahiro Mori, dedicated to robotics research in Japan, coined the term in the 1970s“Disturbing valley”to describe this phenomenon. The “valley” is a bump in a graph of android acceptance that corresponds to the loss of machine characteristics and the endowment of an excessive resemblance to a human.

After investigating the phenomenon by studying the brains of people while observing an android namedRepliee Q2, an international team of researchers has concluded that it is theperceptual mismatch between appearance and movement causing these feelings. In fact, everything points to the existence of an “action perception system” in the human brain configured according to the appearance or movement of people, according to the researchers published in the journalSocial Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

The scientists conducted experiments with 20 people between the ages of 20 and 36 with no significant experience in the study of robotics and who had not visited Japan (where androids are culturally accepting and interacting with them). The individuals watched videos in which the robotRepliee Q2 he carried out a series of actions such as picking up a piece of paper, drinking water, and saying hello. The individuals also observed videos of the same actions carried out by the human who had served as a model, as well as footage of a version of the android in which the wiring and metal parts of the android were shown. Using magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers observed that the most important difference in brain response to human and robot occurred during the video showing the android condition. This activity took place in theparietal cortexof the brain, in the areas that connect the part that processes body movements with the area of the motor cortex in which mirror neurons (responsible for empathy) are suspected.

“The human brain is in charge of verifying if its expectations are met, if the appearance and the movement are congruent,” said Ayse Pinar Saygin, of the University of California (United States) and lead author of the study. In essence,people have no problem with a robot that looks human and moves like one. Nor do they have it before one who looks like a machine and acts like one. The problem arises when the appearance and the movement do not match.

“As the presence of humanoid robots increases, our perceptual systems may readjust to accept these new social partners,” the authors point out in the article. “Or perhaps we decide that it is not such a good idea to build them in our image and likeness.”

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