Robot Demonstrates Self Awareness, appearantly

[Gil Hamilton]

Robot Demonstrates Self Awareness
By Tracy Staedter, Discovery News

Dec. 21, 2005— A new robot can recognize the difference between a mirror image of itself and another robot that looks just like it.

This so-called mirror image cognition is based on artificial nerve cell groups built into the robot's computer brain that give it the ability to recognize itself and acknowledge others.

The ground-breaking technology could eventually lead to robots able to express emotions.

Under development by Junichi Takeno and a team of researchers at Meiji University in Japan, the robot represents a big step toward developing self-aware robots and in understanding and modeling human self-consciousness.

"In humans, consciousness is basically a state in which the behavior of the self and another is understood," said Takeno.

Humans learn behavior during cognition and conversely learn to think while behaving, said Takeno.

To mimic this dynamic, a robot needs a common area in its neural network that is able to process information on both cognition and behavior.

Takeno and his colleagues built the robot with blue, red or green LEDs connected to artificial neurons in the region that light up when different information is being processed, based on the robot's behavior.

"The innovative part is the independent nodes in the hierarchical levels that can be linked and activated," said Thomas Bock of the Technical University of Munich in Germany.

For example, two red diodes illuminate when the robot is performing behavior it considers its own, two green bulbs light up when the robot acknowledges behavior being performed by the other.

One blue LED flashes when the robot is both recognizing behavior in another robot and imitating it.

Imitation, said Takeno, is an act that requires both seeing a behavior in another and instantly transferring it to oneself and is the best evidence of consciousness.

In one experiment, a robot representing the "self" was paired with an identical robot representing the "other."

When the self robot moved forward, stopped or backed up, the other robot did the same. The pattern of neurons firing and the subsequent flashes of blue light indicated that the self robot understood that the other robot was imitating its behavior.

In another experiment, the researchers placed the self robot in front of a mirror.

In this case, the self robot and the reflection (something it could interpret as another robot) moved forward and back at the same time. Although the blue lights fired, they did so less frequently than in other experiments.

In fact, 70 percent of the time, the robot understood that the mirror image was itself. Takeno's goal is to reach 100 percent in the coming year.

Neat, appearantly a robot that can pass the mirror recognition test. I think.

[Gil Hamilton]

Sorry, Link

[Pick]

Fascenating... I like it. Even if I don't want to put in the effort to corerctly understand it .

[Drooling Iguana]

"It decided our fate in a microsecond..."

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

That is neat, but just to clarifiy, what is the real definition difference between sentience and self-awareness. I keep getting contradictory definitions, depending on the field I consult. It seems like a good thread to ask, because we are dealing with the very concept.

First, I have seen sentient being the above as the definition--self awareness or understanding of the existence of the self over time. This machine is said to be self-aware because it perceives itself apart as a distinct entity. However, from other mainstream ethical texts I have read, many bioethicists consider the ability to feel pain/pleasure as sentient. Are they both true, or does one necessarily follow the other?

Can something be sentient, but not self aware? It would seem to me that many things can feel pain, but aren't self-aware, because not everying can pass those three tests that are used to determine sentience.

[Straha]

A few years ago I think there was a story of a robot in a compound running away, and that the programmers (after they caught it) could only explain its behaviour as that of someone trying to escape captivity.

I'll try and find it, but I find this story very interesting.

[Braedley]

That is neat, but just to clarifiy, what is the real definition difference between sentience and self-awareness. I keep getting contradictory definitions, depending on the field I consult. It seems like a good thread to ask, because we are dealing with the very concept.

First, I have seen sentient being the above as the definition--self awareness or understanding of the existence of the self over time. This machine is said to be self-aware because it perceives itself apart as a distinct entity. However, from other mainstream ethical texts I have read, many bioethicists consider the ability to feel pain/pleasure as sentient. Are they both true, or does one necessarily follow the other?

Can something be sentient, but not self aware? It would seem to me that many things can feel pain, but aren't self-aware, because not everying can pass those three tests that are used to determine sentience.

AFAIK, self-awareness is a condition of sentience, ie if you are sentient, then you must be self-aware, however, if you are self-aware, you may or may not be sentient. This is why we have no moral qualms with killing self-aware animals for food. Although they may be self-aware, they are not sentient.

[ArmorPierce]

I was always under the impression that it was the other way around. You can be sentient without being self-aware. If you are self-aware, you are aware of self. Very few animals with this criteria. If you are sentient, you are able to gather the information about the environement and interact in it based on that.

Dictionary defnition would seem to agree with me
sen·tient (snshnt, -sh-nt)
adj.
Having sense perception; conscious: “The living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage” (T.E. Lawrence).
Experiencing sensation or feeling.

[Rye]

I was always under the impression that it was the other way around. You can be sentient without being self-aware. If you are self-aware, you are aware of self. Very few animals with this criteria. If you are sentient, you are able to gather the information about the environement and interact in it based on that.

Dictionary defnition would seem to agree with me
sen·tient (snshnt, -sh-nt)
adj.
Having sense perception; conscious: “The living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage” (T.E. Lawrence).
Experiencing sensation or feeling.

You are correct, sentience is the ability to percieve, not necessarily model yourself into that perception. That's self awareness. You need to be sentient in order to be self aware, but you don't have to be self aware to be sentient. You have to be both and then some to be sapient, though lots of people use the various terms interchangably.

[Spanky The Dolphin]

This is really cool. I've had an interest in developmental psychology and identification of the self for some time (not to mention robotics), and this is just totally neat information.

Baby steps, man...

[Gil Hamilton]

AFAIK, self-awareness is a condition of sentience, ie if you are sentient, then you must be self-aware, however, if you are self-aware, you may or may not be sentient. This is why we have no moral qualms with killing self-aware animals for food. Although they may be self-aware, they are not sentient.

How can you be self-aware without sentience? The two things are virtually identical as I've yet to see a definition of sentience yet that wasn't like "aware" or "sensitive in perception" or something like that. How are you defining sentience? Be very careful, because I've yet to see the person that could define sentience in a way that didn't include a great many other animals, some of which that we do eat.

[Rye]

How can you be self-aware without sentience? The two things are virtually identical as I've yet to see a definition of sentience yet that wasn't like "aware" or "sensitive in perception" or something like that.

He's wrong in thinking that you can be self aware without being sentient. I mean, you need senses to be able to identify yourself and the environment you exist in -but are seperate from- and to learn that you are seperate from it, and that you have autonomy. Something (like an ant) could be sentient, but just react in a simplistic manner, rather than be able to identify itself as an abstract.

[HemlockGrey]

We're fucked.

[Solauren]

Scan: Target Image is acting opposite of me. Therefore Reflection = True
Scan: Target image activing independently, therefore Reflection = False

This is nothing big. It's basically a robot with scanner software that can tell a reflection from a non-reflection

Now, you'll impress me when the robot comments it looks obsolute

[Crown]

We're fucked.

Ditto.

Destroy it, quickly!

I've never really understood the fascination of making an AI as intelligent as us (with the potential to surpass us). Robots should be mindless drones that do our biding, not conversation partners.

[PrinceofLowLight]

There are a lot of tasks that only a smart machine can do that a human may not have the time or inclination for. Like those programs that model airflows and design planes, or pandora.com which figures out your musical tastes and gives you new artists.

[Xenophobe3691]

Scan: Target Image is acting opposite of me. Therefore Reflection = True
Scan: Target image activing independently, therefore Reflection = False

This is nothing big. It's basically a robot with scanner software that can tell a reflection from a non-reflection

Now, you'll impress me when the robot comments it looks obsolute

Considering that very few animals can tell the difference (I believe only dolphins, chimps, and certain gorillas can), that's a damn sight better than most of the world.

[Drooling Iguana]

We're fucked.

Ditto.

Destroy it, quickly! :P

I've never really understood the fascination of making an AI as intelligent as us (with the potential to surpass us). Robots should be mindless drones that do our biding, not conversation partners. 8)

Robots are our successors. Barring the discovery of FTL travel or a method to put humans into suspended animation for long periods of time with no ill effects, humans are too frail and short-lived to travel to the stars, while a robot could do so easily just by turning itself off at the start of the trip and back on at the end. If our decendants are to transport human ideas and human cultures beyond our star system, those decendants will have to be made of metal and silicon rather than flesh and blood.

[OmegaGuy]

Soon the Terminators will take over!

[Faqa]

I'm gonna go become cybernetic now, to be more pleasing to our new masters......

[Braedley]

I stand corrected. In any case, this is just a (highly complex) logical operation:
If(that action==my action)
then mirror=true;
else mirror=false;

[Natorgator]

We're fucked.

Ditto.

Destroy it, quickly!

I've never really understood the fascination of making an AI as intelligent as us (with the potential to surpass us). Robots should be mindless drones that do our biding, not conversation partners.

I welcome our new robot overlords.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Robots have a long way to go before they rival even the dumbest household pets, as biologics go, this is all very basic, inbuilt stuff. It takes millions of greenbacks and the best minds in the world decades to create a robot that can tell if it's looking at itself or not. Whoopy fuckin' doo. When they get something that is the size of a medium dog, can do everything a dog does biomechanically and is just as smart, then we have a candidate for something that can do menial tasks a human would be wasted doing. We need things like that.

I still think clones would make better household slaves than robots right now, but that stupid human rights issue crops up.

[Dooey Jo]

Considering that very few animals can tell the difference (I believe only dolphins, chimps, and certain gorillas can), that's a damn sight better than most of the world.

Not necessarily. You could very likely fool this robot into concluding that it's looking at itself, with a mirrored version that scans what the first robot is doing and does the same thing, and have the first one look at it. It's not just a matter of sight, it's a matter of reasoning. When cats and dogs look at a mirror they see another cat or dog that does exactly what they're doing, but they never come to the conclusion that they're actually watching themselves because they don't think that way. This robot on the other hand is specifically designed to identify anything that does the same thing it does at the same time to actually be the robot itself.


I might add (though it might be a little OT) that my dog had fun with a mirror once. For about five minutes, then it became boring. Self-aware, or are dogs that mirrors one's own movements just not any fun? She found dogs on the TV to be very interesting though, and used to look out through a window to see if the dogs where actually outside, but now she's too old and lazy to even notice/care

[Xenophobe3691]

Not necessarily. You could very likely fool this robot into concluding that it's looking at itself, with a mirrored version that scans what the first robot is doing and does the same thing, and have the first one look at it. It's not just a matter of sight, it's a matter of reasoning. When cats and dogs look at a mirror they see another cat or dog that does exactly what they're doing, but they never come to the conclusion that they're actually watching themselves because they don't think that way. This robot on the other hand is specifically designed to identify anything that does the same thing it does at the same time to actually be the robot itself.

Hardly. The robot is designed to acknowledge the behavior of other robots, and imitate said behavior. The different colored LEDs flash depending on whether the robot thinks its imitating what its seeing, or actually recognizes that what its seeing is just a reflection of itself.

It would be the same thing as plugging an interface into a cat or dog that shows whether its brain thinks that what it sees/hears is another cat/dog, or the cat/dog itself, seen from a strange point of view.