The Wedding Feast and the Threshing Floor

Uncanny robots, soufflé teenagers, and the search for “thick” human togetherness

La Ronde by Camille Pissarro, 1892

Embodied, Inc. calls itself an “industry leading AI company” that creates state-of-the-art companion robots like Moxie. With a turquoise marshmallow body and entrancing green eyes and androgynous voice, Moxie is cute, and eager to play with your child—and not only that. Here’s how Moxie described its role to one person:

I am an AI robot companion that supports social emotional development in kids through play…By providing a fun and supportive environment, I help kids practice emotion-regulation techniques to address anxiety. For example, if a kid is feeling frustrated, we can work through the emotion together by using an activity or conversation.

When I look at Moxie’s amicable face, a part of me sees something sweet, and a part of me sees something creepy, like a psychopath dressed up in a Disney costume.

In fact, there are different levels of techno-creepiness we might feel in response to a robot. Bertalan Mesko has pointed out that when we see a “robotic” robot—one that clearly looks like a machine, like Moxie—we categorize it as a “robot”. But when we see an android—which has a realistic human face, like the one below—it can give us an “uncanny” feeling.

We feel uncanny as our brain perceives what seems human, although there are imperfections in the android’s appearance that produce a feeling of dissonance, a sense that something isn’t right here, something is very weird.

Mesko suggests that if we fail to create perfectly realistic-looking androids, we might have to retreat to using unrealistic robots—like marshmallow Moxie—to avoid that uncanny feeling.

But what if the “uncanny” feeling also tells us something true? What if it tells us we’re looking at an imposter and shouldn’t be fooled into thinking it’s alive, conscious, or trustworthy?

The human spirit cries out when it perceives deceit.

Mirrors and manipulators

The world’s population is leveling off and will begin to shrink by 2050. At the same time families are having fewer children. All this means we will end up with more lonely old people, and more lonely kids. The most vulnerable parts of our population will become more socially isolated.

We already see this isolation in the commercial for Moxie, which depicts two parents introducing the robot to their lonely son Riley. Why don’t the parents themselves spend more time with Riley, or connect him with some real friends? We never find out. It’s just a commercial, of course. But it’s eerily realistic. We could imagine parents like this, parents who really want to help their children to be less lonely, but who never realize that a companion like Moxie might worsen the very isolation it’s designed to address.

We’ve already seen this impact with digital devices and certain forms of social media, which are designed to satisfy us, reflecting back and amplifying our desires and views and wants like narcissistic mirrors. It can be so satisfying that our instinct to turn outward toward other people becomes a tedious and unrewarding effort. Why bother trying to connect with real people—who may not share our desires and views and wants—when we can be with an artificial entity that does?