Hi ,
If you saw the animated movie The Polar Express, in the lead-up to Christmas, you may have come away feeling uneasy. The movie’s characters look almost human - but not quite - and as a result, seem like soulless zombies.
Made in 2004, The Polar Express was the first movie made using motion capture for all the acting
roles and is an example of the “uncanny valley” - a phenomenon whereby “humanoid objects that imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of uneasiness and revulsion in observers.”
The makers of The Polar Express tried to make the characters look realistic. But the technology wasn’t there yet. They would have been better off making them look less human. As in Avatar or M3gan.
The uncanny valley is also the reason legs have proven difficult in the metaverse.
Last year, Mark Zuckerberg made news by revealing legs on his metaverse avatar - then backtracked a few days later when Meta admitted the legs were created using motion capture and weren’t available in Meta’s metaverse at all. Again, the technology wasn’t there.
Here’s the Thing...
When you’re building a data product, it’s tempting to include all the features requested by end users, right from the beginning. But this approach is harmful if the technology isn’t there.
Metaverse developers have historically dealt with the uncanny valley by not giving avatars legs at all. Avatars typically appear as floating torsos. And people are OK with that.
The role of a data scientist includes
communicating to stakeholders what is and isn’t possible.
If you can’t deliver a feature at a level acceptable to your end user, that’s a conversation you need to have.
Sometimes, the
best solution is not to include a feature at all.
Talk again soon,
Dr Genevieve Hayes.
p.s. This post was inspired by a conversation I recently had with Romeo Cabrera Arévalo on Value Driven Data Science. You can hear the entire conversation when Value Driven Data Science returns on Thursday 2nd February or listen to past episodes HERE.
