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Robot Learning To Recognize Itself In Mirror
First time accepted submitter Thorodin writes in with a story at the BBC about scientists at Yale who have built a robot that they hope will be able to recognize itself in a mirror. "A robot named Nico could soon pass a landmark test - recognizing itself in a mirror.
Such self-awareness would represent a step towards the ultimate goal of thinking robots.
Nico, developed by computer scientists at Yale University, will take the test in the coming months.
The ultimate aim is for Nico to use a mirror to interpret objects around it, in the same way as humans use a rear-view mirror to look for cars.
'It is a spatial reasoning task for the robot to understand that its arm is on it not on the other side of the mirror,' Justin Hart, the PhD student leading the research told BBC News. So far the robot has been programmed to recognize a reflection of its arm, but ultimately Mr Hart wants it to pass the "full mirror test".
The so-called mirror test was originally developed in 1970 and has become the classic test of self-awareness."
which is why we now have to sell it as 'machine intelligence' or 'machine learning
I actually prefer the term Machine Intelligence to Artificial Intelligence. There is nothing artificial about a neural network's intelligence. The network may be artificial (man made, or existing as a simulation), but the degree of intelligence is not artificial; It's a function of the network's complexity. Intelligence emerges due to the properties complex interactions naturally have.
Cars do not create Artificial Movement. Machine Learning does not create Artificial Knowledge. Machine Intelligence does not provide Artificial Intelligence, it simply yields a measure of intelligence. A house fly, dog, or penguin doesn't have as complex a neural network as you likely do, but this does not make them Artificially Intelligent simply because their degree of intellect and awareness is less than your own. When we train the lesser minds to communicate with us, and perform tasks, they are not artificially performing the tasks.
I find the term A.I. to be racist, and indicative of the chauvinistic attitude some humans have about their own mental prowess -- Your brains are not special. Any sufficiently complex interaction is indistinguishable from sentience, because that IS what sentience is. Once cybernetic systems attain (and surpass) the level of complexity present in humans brains, Artificial Intelligence will be a derogatory term: "Oh you pass yourself off as being smart, but you're just Artificially Intelligent -- You don't actually understand anything!"
Also: Not that it matters, but I don't personally believe that a god created the race of men. However, some do consider this to be true, and yet they do not call themselves Artificial Life...