e548 — The Uncomfortable Valley
From Games At Work dot Biz by Michael Rowe, Michael Martine, Andy Piper
March 23, 2026 · 32 min · Season 15 · Episode 548
About this episode
The episode discusses the concepts of uncomfortable and uncanny valleys, animated emojis in Microsoft Teams, and various AI-related topics.
Photo by NEOM on Unsplash Published 23 March 2026 e548 with Michael and Michael – Stories and discussion on uncomfortable valley & uncanny valley, Nintendo’s Talking Flower, 8bit Pixel Agents for AI orchestration and a whole lot more. Michael and Michael get things rolling while Andy is away on an article discussing the animated emojis in Microsoft Teams.  Fast Company article author Rebecca Heilweil describes these emojis as the ‘uncomfortable valley’ due to the animations that imbue the emojis shared in Teams with potentially unintended additional meaning.  Check out the link for a comparison graphic showing the similarities and differences between the uncanny and uncomfortable valleys. Switching to robotic animation, Michael and Michael take a look at Nintendo’s Talking Flower, which reminds them of the Alarmo alarm clock.  Next, a digital camera that provides mini quests that are satisfied by taking a picture of “a tiny thing” or “a hidden face”. Turning to AI, the co-hosts check out Pixel Agents, an 8bit representation of agents allowing the human orchestrator to monitor all the agents performing their tasks in a concurrent manner.  Michael R…
People in this episode
Hosts: Michael Rowe, Michael Martine, Andy Piper
Topics covered
- AI
- emojis
- Nintendo
- robotic animation
- cancer research
- jobs
- virtual office
Keywords
- uncomfortable valley
- uncanny valley
- animated emojis
- AI orchestration
- Nintendo
- ChatGPT
- Pixel Agents
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Microsoft Teams, Fast Company, Washington Post
Products: Nintendo’s Talking Flower, Osaurus, ChatGPT
Books & works: Devo
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