Stuart Russell

Until they don't.

Until they become very... You have to be very, very close to perfect in order not to be repulsive.

So the Uncanny Valley is this, you know, like the...

The gap between, you know, so perfectly human and not at all human, but in between it's really awful.

And so there were a couple of movies that tried, like Polar Express was one, where they tried to have quite human-looking characters, you know, being humans, not being superheroes or anything else.

And it's repulsive to watch.

Yeah, I think even more so.

I mean, in San Francisco, we see driverless cars driving around.

And it takes some getting used to.

Actually, you know, when you're driving and there's a car right next to you with no driver in, you know, and it's signaling and it wants to change lanes in front of you and you have to let it in and all this kind of stuff.

It's a little creepy, but I think you're right.

I think...

seeing the humanoid robots.

But that phenomenon that you described, where it was sufficiently close that your brain flipped into saying, this is a human being.

Right.

That's exactly what I think we should avoid.

Because I have the empathy for it then.

Because it's a lie.

And it brings with it a whole lot of expectations about how it's going to behave, what moral rights it has, how you should behave towards it, which are completely wrong.

How hard is it going to be?