Self-recognition in conversational agents
  In a standard Turing test, a machine has to prove its humanness to the
judges. By successfully imitating a thinking entity such as a human, this
machine then proves that it can also think. Some objections claim that Turing
test is not a tool to demonstrate the existence of general intelligence or
thinking activity. A compelling alternative is the Lovelace test, in which the
agent must originate a product that the agent's creator cannot explain.
Therefore, the agent must be the owner of an original product. However, for
this to happen the agent must exhibit the idea of self and distinguish oneself
from others. Sustaining the idea of self within the Turing test is still
possible if the judge decides to act as a textual mirror. Self-recognition
tests applied on animals through mirrors appear to be viable tools to
demonstrate the existence of a type of general intelligence. Methodology here
constructs a textual version of the mirror test by placing the agent as the one
and only judge to figure out whether the contacted one is an other, a mimicker,
or oneself in an unsupervised manner. This textual version of the mirror test
is objective, self-contained, and devoid of humanness. Any agent passing this
textual mirror test should have or can acquire a thought mechanism that can be
referred to as the inner-voice, answering the original and long lasting
question of Turing "Can machines think?" in a constructive manner still within
the bounds of the Turing test. Moreover, it is possible that a successful
self-recognition might pave way to stronger notions of self-awareness in
artificial beings.
