Design of Artificial Intelligence and robotics habitually assumes that adding more humanlike features improves the user experience, mainly kept in check by suspicion of uncanny effects. Three strands of theorizing are brought together for the first time and empirically put to the test: Media Equation (and in its wake, Computers Are Social Actors), Uncanny Valley theory, and as an extreme of human-likeness assumptions, the Singularity. We measured the user experience of real-life visitors of a number of seminars who were checked in either by Smart Dynamics' Iwaa, Hanson's Sophia robot, Sophia's on-screen avatar, or a human assistant. Results showed that human-likeness was not in appearance or behavior but in attributed qualities of being alive. Media Equation, Singularity, and Uncanny hypotheses were not confirmed. We discuss the imprecision in theorizing about human-likeness and rather opt for machines that 'function adequately.'

翻译：人工智能与机器人设计通常假设增加类人特征能提升用户体验，但这种假设始终受到对诡异效应的警惕约束。本文首次将三种理论脉络整合并进行实证检验：媒体方程（及其延伸的"计算机即社会行动者"理论）、诡异谷理论，以及作为类人假设极端的奇点理论。我们测量了若干研讨会现场访客的用户体验，这些访客分别由Smart Dynamics公司的Iwaa、Hanson公司的索菲亚机器人、索菲亚的屏幕虚拟形象或人类助理办理签到。结果表明，类人性并非体现在外观或行为上，而是存在于被赋予的"具有生命"属性中。媒体方程、奇点及诡异谷假设均未得到证实。我们讨论了类人理论构建中的不精确性，转而主张采用"功能适切"的机器。