Self-Awareness Discussion to Develop a Theory
By Lance Winslow
What if the concept of self-awareness is much simpler than we think? What if it is merely a matter of having a dual hemispheric brain talk to itself? What if we grew a brain inside of a box which was triangular, and what if we created a tri-sphere brain? Could we create dual or triplicate self-awareness? Would we have created a schizophrenia type situation? Well, before you dismiss these questions as utter nonsense, I'd like to take a few minutes to explore this with you if I might.
You see, there was an interesting article in Psyorg (dot) com online news titled; "Robot NICO learning self-awareness using mirrors," by Bob Yirka on August 24, 2012. Okay, interesting indeed, so too was the research paper involved. Now then, what's the difference between a single computer and a mirror, or a dual hemisphere brain talking to itself, or two brains talking to each other? Two people talking with one another very quickly realize that they are different than the other person, that it is not just one individual.
Two computers working in an artificial intelligent chat bot situation seem to communicate with each other, or at least are observed to simulate communicating with each other in a way which "appears" for them to demonstrate that each realizes it is a different system, or pretends to be a different entity. Are you following this so far? If we take two computers and one mirror, as soon as each computer learns to respond only to the reflection of the other computer, not to its own reflection, then it will have created the essence of self-awareness, or at least enough to fool us to believing it has done so.
Well, if a robot learns to train itself based on what it sees in the mirror, then that in and of itself would not be self-awareness, in fact it would prove to us that it is unaware that the actions it is making in the mirror are not itself. We must not mistake the difference. Some species can look in the mirror and not realize that they are seeing a reflection, and yet those same animals do have at least some intelligence, and a sense of self.
This test is not the be-all end-all for artificial intelligent self-awareness, but it is a darn good start, and quite interesting when you really stop to think about. In fact, I ask that you do so right now, consider where we should take this next, and what experiments we ought to be trying in the future.
Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Future Concepts. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net
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