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Talking to Technology
Getting to know the psychology of the Uncanny Valley
I sit down at my desk and neatly align three phones. It’s 2pm. That sleepy post-lunch hour when the majority of my coworkers were taking advantage of their food-coma energy slump to settle into their inboxes. Day 1 on the voice team, I have no emails to churn through, but I do have my first assignment: “Familiarize yourself with our product by comparing Google’s voice search abilities with Siri’s”. Sounds easy enough.
I look down at the phones. With low level panic, a realization courses through me — I’m going to have to talk to this thing. Out. Loud. I glance around at my new team. Will they be annoyed? Am I making a fool of myself? There was no way to hide. At first, I attempt a whisper at the two dark Android screens — “okay google”. Nothing happened. So again, more loudly — “Okay Google!” I hear my voice pierce the office quiet and my gut gives out a burst of adrenaline. I glance around, ready to apologize, but no head shifts critically in my direction.
Both Android phones light up, microphone animations waiting for my next cue. I glance down at the prompts I’d written out earlier that day. First up: ‘Nutrition’. Feeling completely bizarre, I wobbly ask, “How much… protein… is in an… egg?” With no hesitation and no attempt at a respectful indoor voice, Google confidently blurts out, “There are six grams of protein in one large hard boiled egg.” Again, no heads turn. Gaining more confidence, I unlock the third phone — my iPhone — and ask the same question. Loud and unapologetic, Siri claims, “The answer is about four point one grams.” Without missing a beat, my new teammate Danielle gives me a wry smile. “Get used to it.”
Talking to technology is bizarre. There, I said it. But it is also revealing. Over the course of the next two years, I would learn that my nerve-wracking experience was entirely normal. Coming home to friends and family for the holidays, I would explain what I did for a living, and show support for the products we were spending our time building for the world. I encouraged them to try voice search out on their own, shared tips and tricks, and gave encouraging smiles from the sidelines as they repeated the very experience I had that first afternoon.
Reluctance. Nerves. Dismissal. Confused fascination.
Back on the job, the product evolved from voice search into something more. Soon, we were to build a personified “assistant” for real. As the person responsible for increasing engagement of voice tech, I realized it wasn’t going to be enough to create beautiful marketing creative and optimize our campaigns with the usual mathematical rigor. This wasn’t about getting people to download an app. I needed to go deep into social psychology to understand what was holding us back from talking.
I did a lot of research. I read studies. I learned about people’s preconceptions, took note of their resistance, and shared in their emotional frustration. I watched them reconsider viewpoints and find their own ways to enjoy and get use out of talking to tech. Some found comfort constraining their interactions to certain environments. In the home or car, safe from social judgment, the technology’s usefulness became more obvious. Others simply lacked a social give-a-shit factor once they found a few features that were useful for them. Empowered by the magic of spell-casting, they’d treat “Wake me up at 7am” like their very own Expecto Patronum.
My observations built up into questions. Why are some of us so tentative? Why do some get frustrated with the technology while others fall in love? It’s just a computer — an object — a piece of metal, wire, and electricity after all. Or is it?
When we talk to technology, we don’t know how much it understands, and the mystery opens up existential confusion. We begin to play with it, poking and prodding with different verbal cues to familiarize ourselves with its unique brand of half-aliveness.
Consider a different example. Say you’re out hiking and you see a strange looking rock. It could be a bug, but you don’t really know. Your interaction might go something like this. First, you squint at it, look down close for signs — a face, antenna, maybe legs. If that doesn’t do the trick, you begin to interact. You gently tap it with a leaf or twig, and wait in dyadic response for it to move. It doesn’t. You address it next, saying, “hey buddy, are you there?” or turn to your friend and ask her, “does this look alive to you?”.
This is the same process we go through when trying out voice search, Alexa, or Google Home. As soon as the technology exhibits an inescapable sign of life — verbal dialogue — we elevate our expectations of it. Now, it’s not just a tool. It’s on par with something that truly is alive. It’s on the hook for demonstrating manners, following social norms, and picking up on empathy. When it fails to live up to these heightened expectations, we judge it. We lose trust in it. All while rationally knowing what it really is, and what it can and cannot do.
When “Ok Google” didn’t activate her prototype Google Home, one woman surprised me. She turned Why didn’t it hear me? into a real claim about herself and her abilities: “I’m just not a tech person” she said with a nervous chuckle, “My kids have to help me with my phone all the time.” Diminishing her own abilities was a painfully familiar safe haven she took shelter in. It had nothing to do with the technology. The interaction brought up something deep and real for her.
A young man took another approach. A few tries in, he screamed “GOOGLE!!!” and cursed. Google perked up, heard his curse and eagerly returned with: “From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, god — dam — mit; gee-oh-dee-ay-em-en-i-tee. An interjection; a word used to express annoyance, anger, etcetera”. I held back a laugh, but needless to say, he wasn’t loving it. He quickly explained to me, “I hate these things. Why do I need them?! They just talk over me like my girlfriend and won’t shut up!”.
Sometimes, I’d reassure, justify, or defend the technology and point out the very factual reasons for why it performed the way it did. Very few of those attempts worked. When someone is left feeling a certain way in an interaction, they viscerally remember. Maya Angelou was right when she said, “People won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel”.
Our bodies and minds have a way of holding on to how we are made to feel. The woman did not care that Google hadn’t been well-trained on accents yet. She left feeling ignored and betrayed. The man knew that Google’s job was to return very factual answers to whatever it heard, and that it did so quite successfully. And yet, he felt tricked, angry, and incompetent. He’d been made the butt of a joke.
Social interactions teach us. It doesn’t matter if they’re with beings that are clearly alive, or with technology that occupies some uncanny middle.
Today, I still only talk to tech in certain environments, where I feel comfortable and respectful of those around me, because those are values I possess. But I’ve gotten better at letting my voice ring out when I want it to and I’ve stopped trying to shrink it into a whisper. I practice asking for what I want and need, and putting voice to it. Out. Loud. Heads may and do critically turn in my direction, but I learn to navigate those new interactions too. And when I feel silly, ashamed, angry, or estranged, I am less quick to fill in a story with my own incompetence. I simply try again.
We’ll all be introduced to more bizarre-seeming, semi-human technologies in the months and years ahead. I urge you to give them a chance, try them out, and take the time to consider how they make you feel. Fear, anger, and irritation are shockingly normal in the beginning. We will feel emotionally uncomfortable in new ways — for the very reason that technology is alien and new. But I guarantee you, with each new interaction, we all have a chance to learn a little more about ourselves.
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