like to answer. I hope that 20 different people will walk out with 20 different things. However, one of the things I want people to think about is this: As technology blurs the line between human and mechanical, artificial or whatever word you want to use — how is that going to change our definition of humanity? catf: “Uncanny Valley” has been described as travel-
ing “to the ethical heart of humankind’s bid to outrace mortality.” What’s that about? tom: The idea for the play came from a National Geographic article that I came across in my dentist’s office a couple of years ago. The article was about the LifeNaut Group in Vermont, which is exploring the idea of downloading human consciousness into a mechanical or artificial body in order to extend our life span by hundreds of years. People in this field seriously talk about immortality. That article included a photo that I found absolutely fascinating and haunting…I just couldn’t get it out of my mind. One of the LifeNaut engineers is sitting in a chair facing a table on which is an artificial head. This head is called Bina 48, and she is probably the most advanced robot in the world right now. I’ve since found out through research that lots of other people are working on this very idea. In fact, an article in the New York Times last June entitled “This Man is Not a Cyborg, Yet” is about a Russian multi-millionaire named Dmitry Itskov who is putting a lot of money into this idea because he wants to live for a long, long time. catf: Do you want to live for a long, long time? Do
you want to be immortal? tom: No, I don’t want to be immortal, but it is hard to answer that question. What does immortality mean? Dmitry Itskov is having a cyborg created that is basically identical to him. By the way, I had never heard the term “uncanny valley” before I read that National Geographic article. So I started to do some research. It’s a really well-known concept in the field of robotics, artificial consciousness and the whole field of computer animation. As I began to work on the play, the word “valley” became very important because it has many metaphysical implications: the valley between life and death, the valley between the creator and the created, the valley between parents and children. I’ve come to realize that this play is very much about parents and children.
catf: What was the first play that made an impression
on you?
tom: The year I graduated from college, I went to
England and saw a lot of plays. One play in particular called “Destiny” made a huge impression on me. It was about the rise of rightwing politics in England, and I was struck that “Destiny” was about something happening in England at that moment. I decided that I wanted to write plays that were very urgently of the moment. “Uncanny Valley” actually takes place 40 years into the future, but it’s of the moment in that it deals with research that Playwright Thomas Gibbons. is happening now and just Photo by Seth Freeman. extrapolates from that. One of the important questions the play asks is this: Is Julian (the artificial human) conscious? Even though the field of study I’ve been researching is called “artificial intelligence,” it seems to me that what researchers are really talking about is “artificial consciousness.” They are a little bit slippery about the distinction. catf: What is the distinction?
tom: In my play, Claire (the human) says, “There are
people in my field who don’t make much of a distinction; they say that to be conscious is to know. But that’s not true. To be conscious is to know we know.” This is the fulcrum of the play. What is consciousness? How do we measure it? How is it signified? Can an artificial being be truly conscious? On the face of it, the play is very simple: two characters in one room and the relationship between a neuroscientist and an artificial being, but as the play goes on, it gets deeper and deeper and deeper. catf: Do you like one character more than another?
And why is the scientist female and the artificial being male? tom: I like them both. I first wrote the play for two actors I knew and they, in fact, did the first reading u fluent | 19