On Game AI In The Uncanny Valley

An anonymous reader writes "Normally, the Uncanny Valley theory is used to critique graphical realism in games, but it also applies to AI. Therefore, designer David Hayward examines AI's Uncanny Valley over at Gamasutra, citing games from Valve's Half-Life 2 to the interactive drama Façade." From the article: 'There's a small minority of people who are consistently strange in particular ways... I don't mean to pick on them as a group; nearly all of us dip into such behavior sometimes, perhaps when we're upset, out of sorts, or drunk. Relative and variable as our social skills are, AI is nowhere near such a sophisticated level of interactive ability. It is, however, robotic. Monstrous and sometimes unintentionally comedic; the intersection of broken AI and spooky people is coming.'"

Comments

For those that haven't seen it...

[LiquidCoooled]

Elmo on fire

Uncanny valley... adaptive levels?

[cgenman]

One of the things which people don't mention about the uncanny valley, is that the valley moves. What seems uncannily human to our parents, was normal to us. What's uncanny to us, will look artificial to our kids.

As our technology improves to create better and better artificial representations, our ability to detect them does as well.

Re:Uncanny valley... adaptive levels?

[fractoid]

I think you misunderstand - the Uncanny Valley isn't a myth so much as an observation. It's pretty simple to demonstrate that most people are less comfortable with things that look nearly-but-not-quite human than things that are human, or things that look completely inhuman. Take, for example, Toy Story vs. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The first one was a 3D cartoon, and hence it was easy to identify with the caricatures of toys. The second tried to be 'photorealistic' and (due to some rushed animation) was a little off, and as a result was much harder to identify with the characters. That's not to say that with excellent mocap/animation/production, an animated model can't be accepted as human. If they are, that just means that they're good enough to appear on the 'near side' of the valley.

The composite faces you mention are likewise on the near side of the valley. Images of faces fabricated from scratch often are likewise, with current technology, due to the fact that still images contain so much less information than moving ones. Compare modern CGI faces to those of the late 90s and you'll see how they gradually got better, climbing the near slope of the valley and becoming more believable and identify-with-able.

Interesting article

[nEoN nOoDlE]

I suspect that consultation with and evaluation by psychology departments may become relevant to game AI in the coming years, given that they're the most comprehensive resource in existence on human behavior

I disagree with this. I think in the future, game programmers won't have to go as far as the psychology departments of their nearest schools. They'll just have to walk over to the nearest cubicle and talk to the animators working on the game. As game models have become more and more complex, companies are using more and more motion capture to capture action sequences, but animators (especially good ones) are trained to make a non-living 3d model imitate human behavior. There's over 50 years of research done for animation by animators on how to bring life to drawings and 3d models in motion - which is something that can be directly transferred over into programming terms as opposed to a research paper on a psychological disorder. An animator can tell you when to make a character blink in order for it to appear more realistic; a psychologist, not so much.

btw, IAAA (I am an animator) so I'm slightly biased :)

Re:Interesting article

[dj_tla]

I'm really surprised that your comment was moderated so highly... It may be interesting, but it is incredibly off-topic. Let's not confuse the issue here: the article is about Game AI. Do animators play a big part in creating realistic games? I would argue no. It's easy to get immersed in a well written book, and yet a crappy wooden romantic comedy doesn't pull me in at all. But aren't actors people, providing the most human-like interaction you could hope to achieve through animation? A poorly written script, where characters get in wacky situations and manage to crack a joke at least once a minute just isn't engaging to me because people don't act that way. Game AI could give two shits how nice its graphical representations look, the point (at least for the AI that is discussed in the article) is to make characters behave in a realistic fashion. If I shoot my gloriously animated team-mate in the crotch in "Excellent New FPS Game 3," I want them to turn on me! If they stand there and take it, then I lose that sense of immersion, and any tension I've built up from the realistic ambiance is lost.

So, in response to the quote (I suspect that consultation with and evaluation by psychology departments may become relevant to game AI in the coming years, given that they're the most comprehensive resource in existence on human behavior), yes, psychology will play a large role as we are able to dedicate more computing resources to AI. This isn't conjecture; I and many other researchers are already consulting with psychologists in designing games.

Re:Interesting article

[CuteAlien]

An animator can tell you when to make a character blink in order for it to appear more realistic; a psychologist, not so much. The problem with the "when make a character blink" is that it only leads to longer and longer lists and situations. An AI programmer prefers to find the "why does the character blink" and implement that. The "when" will follow once that is done.

Humans may not fair much better.

[Anonymous Coward]

The game the writer keeps talking about "Facade," invites the player to play multiple run-throughs. The writer then is creep-out by the "robotic" behavior that surfaces. Since without a time machine it is impossible to view humans in the same way, how do we know we would fair better. Bill Murry's character in the movie "Groundhog Day" seemed to develop a view of his fellow man not different than the view expressed by the writer of this article.

It has already arrived:

[Progman3K]

>> [...] the intersection of broken AI and spooky people is coming.

Ever "talk" with Eliza?
That's a broken personality right there...

The Author Missed the point

[big4ared]

The author is missing the point of the uncanny valley. The point of the uncanny valley is the dip. If you have a non-realistic pixar-like character (The Incredibles), you empathise with them. If you have a more realistic, but not good enough character, the character gets creepier (Polar Express). Then, when it gets really good, you can empathise with them again (Hugo Weaving, i.e. Agent Smith, in the Matrix Sequels).

The author basically says "AI is hard". But he doesn't make any real argument as to there being some "valley" where as the characters get less realistic they act more believably, and as they get more realistic, they also act more believably. A much more accurate title would be "AI is a steep hill".

I still call bull

[Moraelin]

I still call bull. I was one of those who quoted the Uncanny Valley left and right, but, sorry, I'm more and more convinced that it's so much bullshit it could fertilize a few acres. There is no one-dimension axis measuring likeness to human.

E.g., let's take two sets of models which were both in the "uncanny valley" if it exists. On one end you have the extremely detailed models of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and on the other the models of EQ2 which a _lot_ of people described as "lifeless", "sterile" or other such euphemisms. I'm one of those. In fact I'd call them just disturbingly wrong, the kind where your subconscious keeps snapping out of suspension of disbelief screaming "that's not a tree!" and "that's not a human!" If an uncanny valley exists, then they're in the uncanny valley too, right?

Then something that falls in between those two points should be in the uncanny valley too, right?

Well, wrong. Oblivion for example was a lot easier to swallow than either, although detail-level-wise it's between the two.

That's called a Reductio ad absurdum proof, where assuming X leads to the false conclusion Y.

Furthermore, if you've actually read the Uncanny Valley theory, the examples used are blatantly bogus hand-waving. E.g., yes, a zombie is disturbing, but it's bogus to claim that it's purely for aesthetic or "how much it resembles humans" reasons. There's a whole bunch of cultural and emotional meaning tied to that, and claiming that it trips people's fears just because of the "uncanny valley" effect, is like claiming that you fear a car coming at you just because the headlights look sorta uncanny like eyes.

And again, you can do a reductio ad absurdum there. The Undead in WoW are the most disturbing visually, the characters in Spirits Within are uncanny valley too, so something in between should be in the Uncanny Valley too. Yet the Wow humans and elves are considered the races that look good.

In fact the zombies are the perfect counter-example all by themselves. If lowering realism moves something out of the uncanny valley (e.g., lower polycount characters in games are less disturbing than the characters in The Spirits Within), then it should do the same for zombies. It doesn't. They're still repulsive even at Quake 1 polycounts.

Or if slight imperfections like in Spirits Within, or details like teeth on a vampire, are what makes them disturbing via an Uncanny Valley effect... then how about pointy ears on elves? Shouldn't Legolas cause the same effect? Well, bummer, he doesn't.

Etc, etc, etc.

The Uncanny Valley is one of those things that makes sense only as long as you don't actually use your brains.

Yes, there are all sorts of ways in which being different or acting not-right can trip people's suspension of disbelief. That much is obvious. But there is no single dimension measuring it, and no single Uncanny Valley graph. There are thousands of factors which can be right or awfully wrong or somewhere in between, and thousands of fears, beliefs, expectations that can be tripped by it. You can't take the average and use it as the X axis for an uncanny valley graph, because even if the average is 99% right (hence the whole should be on the right side of the valley), one single detail (e.g., "omg, they're zombies") which can be disturbing on its own.

E.g., The Spirits Within wasn't just "a littel off", it had outright bad acting. That's what tripped people's suspension of disbelief. There was no uncanny valley effect, no overall being just a little off, it's just what you'd get with human actors acting badly.

It also overlooks the problem of expectations. The Spirits Within is wrong because you expect them to be human, Toy Story or Oblivion aren't because you expect them to be respectively toys or NPCs in a computer game. You have different sets of expectations for them.

Aesop's Fables (since they keep getting mentioned as Uncanny Valley effect exam

The Uncanny Valley in two sentences

[mcvos]

When something does not appear human, its human traits stand out. When something does appear human, its inhuman traits stannd out. This is basically what the Uncannny Valley is about. Exactly what should be considered human and inhuman here probably depends on a thousands of factors. Perhaps being "done well" is part of it, but mostly I think more human appearance and behaviour raises the stanndards of craftmanship considerably. When you're using stick figures, it's not a problem if they don't move exactly like Tiger Woods. In fact, it might be uncannny if they did. If you've got spectacular, photorealistic graphics, everything that's not equally realistic gives you the feeling that something is not quite right.