Technologies

‘You have to distance yourself from it being a human’: Meeting Ameca the humanoid

Yea, though I walk through the uncanny valley, I will fear no evil.

This story is part of CES, where CNET covers the latest news on the most incredible tech coming soon.

There’s something distinctly unsettling about planning your first meeting with a robot.

At CES 2022, I had the chance to interview Ameca the robot during a one-on-one demonstration with its creators. I wanted to know if this humanoid was actually real. I wanted to see if its facial expressions were as realistic (and haunting) as they were in the videos I’d seen online. But mostly I wanted to know how the robot would respond to my questions. Should I prep a Voight-Kampff test, just to be sure?

It turns out I needn’t have worried about feeling disturbed by Ameca’s spoken responses. They were no more troublesome than what I get from Alexa. But the face Ameca made when its creator tried to poke it in the face? That will stay with me for a long time.

If you’re on the internet, you’ve probably seen Ameca. The gray-faced, humanoid robot blinked its way into the public consciousness in late 2021 when a video of its facial expressions went viral on social media. Elon Musk responded to the video with one word, «Yikes.» Chrissy Teigen retweeted it to her 13 million followers with four words: «absolutely. the fuck. not.»

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But while Ameca had some people running for the hills, its creators at UK company Engineered Arts were delighted.

«We were incredibly surprised,» says Morgan Roe, Engineered Arts’ director of operations. «Overnight, it became a sensation. We got 24 million views on one Twitter post.»

Roe puts it down to Ameca’s not-quite-robot, not-quite-human appearance. Its body is all metal and plastic, its face is a deliberately genderless and nonhuman gray. It has 17 individual motors inside its head controlling its movements and expressions. But its facial features are surprisingly vivid and emotive. And it’s this combination of artificial and lifelike that Roe says speaks to our collective vision of what humanoid robots will look like in the future.

«We’ve all seen it in the movies, we’ve all seen iRobot and A.I. Artificial Intelligence,» he says. «And suddenly, that’s real.»

Roe is speaking to me via Zoom from the show floor of CES, where Ameca is being shown to crowds, in the latex flesh, for the first time. Even though I’m seeing Roe and his robot over a Zoom call, it’s hard to shake just how real Ameca looks. I find myself distracted. I’m no longer speaking to the very friendly human Englishman I’m supposed to be interviewing. My eyes are straying over to Ameca’s face to see how it’s responding to our conversation. A furrowed eyebrow ridge, the twitch of a smile. Ameca isn’t human, and yet…

This isn’t the first hauntingly humanoid robot Engineered Arts has released. For the past four years, the company has been creating a line of lifelike Mesmer robots and showing them to conferencegoers on crowded show floors.

«Each Mesmer robot is designed and built from 3D in-house scans of real people, allowing us to imitate human bone structure, skin texture and expressions convincingly,» the Engineered Arts website tells prospective clients. «Mesmer is designed to be modular, so you can remove the head with one click and no tools, and swap it for another.»

Princess Mombi, eat your heart out.

Ameca isn’t destined for the conference circuit. It doesn’t run and jump like the robots created by Boston Dynamics, and it’s not something you can preorder now as a household helper. Roe says it’ll be at least 10 years before a robot like Ameca is «walking amongst us» as a service robot. Sure, Walking Among Us sounds like the title of the documentary that’ll eventually chronicle the decline of humanity, but we’ve got another decade before we need to worry about that.

Ameca also doesn’t have Mesmer’s flesh-colored skin tones. In place of the lifelike human hair on Mesmer’s head, Ameca has a translucent plastic skull. We see the robot’s joints and parts. Ameca is still undoubtedly «other,» and that’s deliberate.

«What we found was, when you try and make it look ultra lifelike [like] our other Mesmer line, it looks a bit more sinister, because it’s right in the uncanny valley,» Roe says. «But when we created Ameca, we pulled it backwards out of the uncanny valley.»

Of course, as Roe is saying these things to me over our Zoom call, Ameca is responding. Raising its eyebrows at people walking past. Subtly moving its lips (or, more accurately, the actuators around its mouth hole) as though trying to ape the speech of its human creator.

«Because it looks less human…» says Roe, while Ameca smiles into the middle distance.

«Because it’s plastic, because it’s metal…» says Roe, Ameca glancing over at him with a vague smile.

«Because it’s of gray skin, it’s suddenly…» Roe waves his hand near Ameca’s face and the robot leans back, startled.

«Ooh, hello,» says Roe, making eye contact with the humanoid and leaning back in startled unison. He’s lost his train of thought.

«It’s suddenly, uh, less — less scary.»

I’m struck with the urge to ask the question I’ve been thinking all along. The question I’ve wanted to ask since I first saw the video of Ameca in the lab, with its engineer/programmer hunched over a laptop and another identical Ameca moving slowly in the background.

«When you’re in your offices, working late into the night on some extra lines of code, do you ever do a double take or have to check behind you, at the robot, to see if it winked at you?» I ask.

«Actually no,» says Roe. «When you’re working with it day to day, it’s suddenly, definitely a robot. And a lot of the time, you’ll see one of the engineers walking through the workshop, not with a robot, with just the head. And you have to distance yourself from it being a human. Otherwise, then it’s really sinister.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 7 #706

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Feb. 7, No. 706.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is especially tricky, as a variety of words could fit the theme. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Boo-o-o-o-ring

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Zzzz… not very exciting.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

HIND, DATE, DRUM, MOST, CHIN, PAIN, RAIN, NOSE, TOME, TOMES

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

DULL, DREARY, HUMDRUM, MUNDANE, TIRESOME

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is WATCHINGPAINTDRY. To find it, start with the W that’s three letters up from the bottom on the far-left row, and wind up, across and down.

Toughest Strands puzzles

Here are some of the Strands topics I’ve found to be the toughest.

#1: Dated slang. Maybe you didn’t even use this lingo when it was cool. Toughest word: PHAT.

#2: Thar she blows! I guess marine biologists might ace this one. Toughest word: BALEEN or RIGHT.

#3: Off the hook. Again, it helps to know a lot about sea creatures. Sorry, Charlie. Toughest word: BIGEYE or SKIPJACK.

Technologies

Spotify Launches ‘About the Song’ Beta to Reveal Stories Behind the Music

The stories are told on swipeable cards as you listen to the song.

Did you know Chappell Roan drew inspiration for her hit song Pink Pony Club from The Pink Cadillac, the name of a hot-pink strip club in her Missouri hometown? Or that Fountains of Wayne’s song Stacy’s Mom was inspired by a confessed crush a friend had on the late co-founder Adam Schlesinger’s grandmother?

If you’re a fan of knowing juicy little tidbits about popular songs, you might find more trivia in About the Song, a new feature from streaming giant Spotify that’s kind of like the old VH1 show Pop-Up Video.

About the Song is available in the US, UK, New Zealand and Australia, initially for Spotify Premium members only. It’s only on certain songs, but it will likely keep rolling out to more music. Music facts are sourced from a variety of websites and summarized by AI, and appear below the song’s lyrics when you’re playing a particular song.

«Music fans know the feeling: A song stops you in your tracks, and you immediately want to know more. What inspired it, and what’s the meaning behind it? We believe that understanding the craft and context behind a song can deepen your connection to the music you love,» Spotify wrote in a blog post.

While this version of the feature is new, it’s not the first time Spotify has featured fun facts about the music it plays. The streaming giant partnered with Genius a decade ago for Behind the Lyrics, which included themed playlists with factoids and trivia about each song. Spotify kept this up for a few years before canceling due to multiple controversies, including Paramore’s Hayley Williams blasting Genius for using inaccurate and outdated information.

Spotify soon started testing its Storyline feature, which featured fun facts about songs in a limited capacity for some users, but was never released as a central feature.

About the Song is the latest in a long string of announcements from Spotify, including a Page Match feature that lets you seamlessly switch to an audiobook from a physical book, and an AI tool that creates playlists for you. Spotify also recently announced that it’ll start selling physical books.

How to use About the Song

If you’re a Spotify Premium user, the feature should be available the next time you listen to music on the app.

Start listening to any supported song.
Scroll down past the lyrics preview box to the About the Song box.
Swipe left and right to see more facts about the song.

I tried this with a few tracks, and was pleased to learn that it doesn’t just work for the most recent hits. Spotify’s card for Metallica’s 1986 song Master of Puppets notes the song’s surge in popularity after its cameo in a 2022 episode of Stranger Things. The second card discusses the band’s album art for Master of Puppets and how it was conceptualized.

To see how far support for the feature really went, I looked up a few tracks from off the beaten path, like NoFX’s The Decline and Ice Nine Kills’ Thank God It’s Friday. Spotify supported every track I personally checked.

There does appear to be a limit to the depth of the fun facts, which makes sense since not every song has a complicated story. For those songs, Spotify defaults to trivia about the album that features the music or an AI summary of the lyrics and what they might mean.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Feb. 7, #502

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Feb. 7, No. 502.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition features a fun batch of categories. The purple one requires you to find hidden words inside some of the grid words, but they’re not too obscure. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Golden Gate.

Green group hint: It’s «Shotime!»

Blue group hint: Same first name.

Purple group hint: Tweak a team name.