Commercial Break: Can You Remember The First Time You Saw Yourself?

I can't quite vocalize specifics of the tech being used here, so I'll let the engineers responsible do that for you here. However, I want to highlight a portion of their synopsis that struck a chord with me.

This quite simple experiment touches interesting psychological aspects of self-consciousness, whose complexity can be proved by the fact I already mentioned of the few species that can recognize themselves in front of the mirror.

I'm realizing my next batch of upcoming articles deal largely with how personally I process detail in art and/or the production of said art. When I saw Qbo, looking at himself ... itself, I first thought [skeptically] how much assistance is being used. I hear keyboard clatter, is this playing a role?

Then I let go. I looked at the robot's optical movements as if looking at a car being manufactured. Jigsaw puzzles being aligned but not wedged together. Then the instructor tells Qbo that the reflection is of him ... of it. 

I tried thinking long and hard about the first time I saw my reflection. It was so far back that my consciousness takes for granted how our brains adjusted and have been adjusted time and time again, in how we see ourselves, and how we see each other.

A very human side of me wondered if a 'second Qbo' was there looking at an adjacent mirror, would the litany of pre-programmed reactions have still been "Nice?" What if Qbo's reaction wasn't so cheerful?

I love that the next frontier of artificial intelligence is of aspects of the self-conscious. But I do find it funny that we must build something wholly new, to understand something about ourselves. Thoughts?