Gigaom AI Minute – August 1

Transcript

Can a computer be self aware?

Psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr of the University of Albany had an ingenious insight back in 1970, which is today regarded as the gold-standard for measuring self awareness. It is called the mirror test and it looks like this: You take a sleeping animal, or a sedated animal, and you put a spot of red paint on their forehead and give it access to a mirror. When the animal wakes up and later sees its reflection in the mirror, does it try to wipe the red spot off. In other words, does the animal see the reflection as itself? If so, Gallup maintained, then it must have a sense of self.

This is a hard test to pass, and most animals can’t. Some that can are chimpanzees and bonobos, but interestingly not gorillas. However, some speculate that this is because gorillas avoid looking other gorillas in the eye, so the tested animals just may not have seen the spot. Elephants have been shown to pass, as have bottlenose dolphins and killer whales. Crows and ravens, the geniuses of the bird world can’t pass. And in fact, only one non-mammal, Magpies, has been shown to pass. All though some interesting recent research maintains that ants can as well. Animals that can’t pass the test include dogs and cats, pandas and sea lions. Human children usually pass the test around age two.

Why is this germane? Higher intelligence may come in part from us having an idea of being and experiencing “self.” While a computer can be programmed to wipe the dot off, that doesn’t mean that the computer has a self in any sense at all. This could be a limit to how far we can develop artificial intelligence.