The Uncanny Valley (Part 2)

Another article about the Uncanny Valley... this one's a little less fun, but a little creepier...

The Man Who Mistook His Girlfriend for a Robot

[EXCERPTS:]

This is why (David Hanson) has little patience for the Uncanny Valley: It's a concept that plays on fear rather than possibility, that asserts we should shy away from making robots look too human, rather than asking what positive benefits there might be to the truly lifelike robot. "Achieving the subtlety of human appearance is a challenge that should really be undertaken," he says. Only realistic heads will challenge AI researchers to integrate the various robot capabilities—adaptive vision, natural language processing and more—to create "integrated humanoid robotics," Hanson says.
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It will take decades at least to raise robots that are as smart and independent as we are, but the work has begun. Robots that learn on their own, robots that walk, robots that socialize with people, are all now in various stages of development. "A realistic autonomous humanoid is the Holy Grail," (some scientific guy) says. And, on the far side of the Uncanny Valley, robots would have a realistic, emotionally expressive face—a face that challenges robot-brain builders to make smarter robots, a face that fools us into treating a machine as if it were human. A face a person could grow attached to.
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Humans are facing an identity crisis, Hanson said — one that just a few people know about but many sense. "If we can mechanize what makes us human, that will make us feel like a mechanism," he said. Maybe that's what really lies behind the resistance to realistic humanoids, the reluctance to venture into the Uncanny Valley. And when we do cross over?

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Here's a CNN article that is a little more succinct and accessible.

Now are you afraid...?! Not nearly enough...