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Robot Demonstrates Self-awareness
shinyplasticbag writes "A new robot can recognize the difference between a mirror image of itself and another robot that looks just like it. ... The ground-breaking technology could eventually lead to robots able to express emotions."
the question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than whether a submarine can swim.
Edsger Dijkstra
Now, before you dismiss it, he also said one of the great truths:
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Do the fields of AI or evolutionary psychology have any definitions of "self-awareness" or "consciousness"?
I see a lot of stuff in the popular press about a robot or computer becoming aware, but everyone seems to totally ignore what exactly the definition is. How do we know that most people are aware? If I say that I know that I am aware, what exact claim am I making?
I had a philosophy professor in college, Tom Kasulis, who studied Eastern and Western philosophy. He had a breakthrough moment when he went to study in a Zen Monastery. In order to enter, he had to do a 'pre-interview' with the abbot, a Zen Master. The master asked him, "What is Zen"? Kasulis mumbled somthing about it being a practice, not a belief. The Abott responded, "Zen is -- knowing one's self. It is the same undertaking that Western Philophers undertook."
Kasulis taught my class about Hindu philosophy of the self or soul and the supersoul ( Atman and Brahman ). I thought some of it might be a useful high-level definition of self-awareness in AI. It goes something like this:
Q. Are you aware?
A. Yes.
Q. Are you aware that you are aware?
A. Yes.
Q. Are you aware that you are aware that you are aware?
A. Yes.
Q. Are you aware that you are aware that you are aware...?
So, you see it leads to a never ending chain of awareness. In Hindu philosophy, the ultimate awareness, the 'unseen see-er', the entire infinite chain of awareness, is the Atman, or the supersoul that transcends the individual.
In the AI realm, we could build a machine that had two components: a perception system (vision, sound, whatever) and a detection-of-perception system ( a 'true' output if it percieves a system that can percieve ). Once the perception system falls on the system itself, it will detect a perception system. It will 'know' that it 'knows'. Then, it will detect another perception system in the original act of perception. Then, it will detect that act of perception, and in turn that act of perception... ad infinitum
The self's perception of the self has this hall-of-mirrors quality that does not occur when the self perceives others of the same kind.
You can take it one step futher and detect other self-aware systems if you can somehow detect this self-detection in other systems. However, I haven't figured out a logical argument for how to do this.
I humbly submit my hall-of-mirrors definition of self-awareness. What does the Slashdot non-liberal arts majors make of it?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Since the exact technology (artifical neurons?) is not described in detail as to how they work, ascribing "self-awareness" to this experiment is "claiming too much."
Also, use of the word "understanding" may be claiming too much in the absence of any evidence of conceptual processing in either the neurons or the software.
Still, it's an interesting bit of work, which may prove useful if it can be extended.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
In it you would learn many very interesting things. One of the more trivial things you would learn is that once one is aware that one is aware, the infinite recursion comes along for free and is mostly a red herring. Smullyan explains Godel's Theorems mathematically and also in terms of "reasoners" reasoning about their own reasoning.
IMO, Smullyan has a much deeper and more fundamental understanding of Godel's Theorems than Nagel and Newman who popularized them in their book "Godel's Proof". Unfortunately, Hofstadter got most of his intuition about Godel's proofs from Nagel and Newman so he has continued to propagate their limited understanding onto the masses.
In a nutshell, Godel's Theorems deal with the mathematics of self-awareness.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Does the concept of "recognizing self by mirror" require the concept of "mirror?" If someone doesn't understand what a mirror does, then they may fail the test but actually be self-aware.
Brain injury patients teach us that there are circuits in the brain for things we wouldn't expect. A stroke patient lost the concept of "left." She could only eat half of a piece of cake in front of her -- her brain wouldn't recognize the other half. She learned to turn the plate, so that a piece of cake would magically appear! Doing this several times, the cake was essentially consumed.
If the concept of "left" can be lost, what about concept of "mirror?" A human may be capable of reasoning out that the person in the mirror must be me, but for creatures that are less intelligent, I'm not so sure.
One of our smarter parrots does not seem to recognize herself in the mirror. She attacks the mirror image. A second parrot seems to understand the concept of "camera." I once connected a video camera directly to the TV and videotaped him -- he began to experiment with moving and watching the parrot on the TV move. All of a sudden, he began to show off and...strut. Ever since then, he shows off for cameras and struts when he sees a photo of himself. He won't strut when he sees a parrot of his own species that is not him. (Note: I don't know if he's cueing on backgrounds to tell if the parrot is him or if he can identify himself.) He's the only parrot in the house that doesn't like anacondas on Animal Planet. Raptors also upset him. Most parrots don't watch TV, the refresh rate is too slow. But somehow he does.
I'd love to know how Alex the Parrot responds to "Who?" when looking at a mirror. One could start out by positioning the mirror so that someone else is visible, someone Alex could name. Then, by changing the angle of the mirror, have Alex look at Alex.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
There is a much deeper problem in the title than this. It is, quite simply, impossible for one being to prove its self-awareness to another. We may be able to make some sort of educated guess as to things being self-aware, but there is no way we can directly observe or experience the self-awareness of another being. This is by definition, since self-awareness is that recognition of one's own existence a a separate entity that is unique to and inseparable from that entity - it is not merely the reaction of the bio-machine to its environment no matter how complex and seemingly independent that reaction.
The Star Trek TNG episode "The Measure of A Man" gives a fairly good explanation of the problem. Even if we develop a non-biological machine that mimics in all respects the behaviour of a human, down to the finest of details, we will have no way of determining whether that machine is self-aware. A corollory of this is that we have no way of determining if any particular machine is not self-aware. You are probably fairly confident your computer is not self-aware, but just try proving it. If you think that you can prove something is, or is not, self-aware, then you have probably not understood the problem.