Greetings from the AI Uncanny Valley - Lions UnAuthorized

The Uncanny Valley refers to the eerie or unsettling feeling created by not-quite-human figures like Tom Hanks in Polar Express. Many of us experience these feelings when confronted with synthetically-created voice responses or narration, most deep fakes, or prose

I was supposed to write a blog about analysis paralysis, but the subject matter turned me into an emu in the headlights. So I'm going with AI instead! My Aunt Mavis is terrified of it. Every time a dog barks, my neighbor thinks it's a terminator sent from the future to erase him. I hear it’s all the rage, at least that’s what the kids are saying. “Just a matter of time before the robot apocalypse begins.” Says Aunt Mavis.

So I finally used the AI engine on Bing. Friends and colleagues have been playing with the tech for some time now, usually for entertainment purposes. But we are starting to see AI pop up at work where it has thus far proven to be even more entertaining. We recently encountered an AI powered transcription tool that conjured nonexistent attendees, created nonsensical action items, and failed miserably at accurately documenting the meeting events. So far, at least, Skynet is not self aware.

Like everyone else on this rock, I can’t possibly know how tools like ChatGPT and whatever the glassy-eyed MMA enthusiast is cooking up over at Meta will eventually impact our economy, culture, or daily lives. Will AI write the next season of Yellowjackets? Bring John Wayne back from the dead? Eliminate the need for accountants and lawyers? Turn us all into batteries and stuff our consciousness into The Matrix?

I haven’t a clue. All I know is that the current AI hysteria reminds me a lot of the dot com bubble when we all somehow thought Handyman Online and 1-800 Dot Com were worthy of our investment dollars. Read enough content opining about the tech and it’s not hard to think of AI as the duct tape of software applications. Thousand and one uses. There’s value in that, isn’t there?

Should we focus on the potential value of AI tech or just be afraid?

Of course, there is potential value here. AI-powered search engines are “transforming the way we search online” by creating a more efficient and conversational research experience. At least that’s what I was told and choose to believe. Ask a search engine, even Bing, which actor had roles in both Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Return of the Living Dead, and it’ll plop out a bunch of generic media focused on Tarantino’s film. Ask the same question of the Bing chat bot and a nanosecond later it provides the correct answer: Clu Gulager.

That’s valuable for a curious film buff who forgot Clu Gulager’s name. Not sure that’s a value that can be widely monetized, but you never know. When I asked the bot if toasters had souls, it explained how simple machines are not sentient, but when I queried it about why my Uncle Ed smells funny, it ended the conversation passive aggressively with the bot version of “It’s not you, it’s me.” 

Then I asked it to write me a simple program that created an animation of a flag blowing in the wind. It did it using Python in about fifteen seconds, even explaining to me, a layperson, how to run the program. After that, I felt that it was time for AI to write a story about a lonely mime who builds a spaceship and flies to the moon.

The result was flawless gibberish, written at roughly the second or third grade level. Add a couple pictures or animations (Written using Python!) and it would’ve been a lovely book for a child of average intelligence capable of really suspending disbelief. Story had an arc, and all the proper structural components. A beginning, middle, and end. 

It was gibberish because with all the information at its disposal, artificial intelligence didn’t appear to understand that a mime would lack the skills and raw materials to build a spaceship and fly into space, or that they would die within seconds if left on the surface of the moon. These obvious insurmountable obstacles were not set up as challenges to overcome in an effort to build dramatic tension. They were ignored in the story. Surely the program ingested data about the structure of novels, plays and screenplays — not copyright protected works, of course;). It must’ve had access to basic information about how to construct a story and write characters with whom readers could empathize, right?

Certainly, but LLM-based AI like ChatGPT and my new friend Bing are not self aware like the tech in countless dystopian science fiction books and movies. It’s a software program that has accumulated vast amounts of data, analyzed it to come to some conclusions about language, and then regurgitates a response to a query. AI doesn’t dream of electric sheep or possess an inner monologue. It’s just a big giant digestive tract capable of producing answers instead of waste.

So when humans inevitably try to infuse AI with humanity, the result is a trip to The Uncanny Valley. For those not familiar, The Uncanny Valley refers to the eerie or unsettling feeling created by not-quite-human figures like Tom Hanks in Polar Express. Many of us experience these feelings when confronted with synthetically-created voice responses or narration, most deep fakes, or prose produced by Robbie the Robot. There’s just something… off… about the product. When we ask AI to do something that requires humanity, the result is awkward and artificial, like Ron DeSantis.

But if we revisit the tale of the astronaut mime, could a human build on the uncanny AI gibberish and make it a viable, even entertaining story?

Yes. 

And that could be where the near term value can be found. A human can infuse humor and humanity into an AI-generated story, fixing all the issues with lack of oxygen on the lunar surface along the way, and end up with an arguably good story when done. Would it be faster than just starting from the blank page? Arguably, no, In our experience, not in a significant way that would impact a project’s timeline or budget, but if the blank page causes a writer to stare at it for 2 hours in mortal terror, then it does speed the writing process. The AI doesn’t replace the writer, it makes their work process smoother and their life easier, or perhaps just helps them get past the horror of the blank page. 

Today’s AI tools can help speed research, accelerate development of new applications, and improve manufacturing efficiency. The current viable uses don’t seem to jibe with the massive investments in the technology by big tech, and the picture gets murky in a hurry when industry leaders talk of future applications for AI. But, hey, people like Elon Musk are much smarter and more adept at sculpting their own earwax than me, so there must be more to it than finding out if toasters have souls.

AI technology seems poised to accelerate advancements in a variety of fields, but for the moment, I see technology able to help many of us do our jobs better, and that’s a good thing. I hope.

Be sure and stay tuned for my next unauthorized blog which will not be about the assigned topic, but rather an examination of why the emu is the funniest bird.