Robonaissance

Robonaissance

The Mirror Test

The Mirror Test
A mark you can’t see without the glass. Eight machine failures, each held beside a brain. Some likenesses hold. Some are only a word. 8 parts, one…
 • Hugo
The Mirror Test, Part 8: The Donkey Kong Transistor
Neuroscience’s tools, tried on a chip whose workings were known, seemed to find a transistor for one video game. After seven mirrors, where does the…
 • Hugo
The Mirror Test, Part 7: Living in the Past
A robot trained in a simulator without delay fell over at once. Brains work on news that is about a tenth of a second old. Acting turns small errors…
 • Hugo
The Mirror Test, Part 6: The Hospital in the X-Ray
Chest X-rays for a pneumonia model turned out to carry the name of the hospital. Human vision runs on assumptions too. The difference is what each…
 • Hugo
The Mirror Test, Part 5: Five Plus One Is Seven
In 1989 a network that learned to add twos forgot how to add ones. Brains face the same problem, and sleep is one place researchers have watched…
 • Hugo
The Mirror Test, Part 4: The Honest Liar
AI does not lie. Some researchers say it confabulates, a word clinicians use for patients who sincerely report things that never happened
 • Hugo
The Mirror Test, Part 3: The First Move Costs More
A model that misreads an early turn rarely recovers fully, and a century of attention research shows that people also pay for a change they saw coming
 • Hugo
The Mirror Test, Part 2: The Middle Doesn’t Pay
Machines and brains both lose the middle of the story, and the shared blind spot reveals what memory is actually for.
 • Hugo
The Mirror Test, Part 1: The Strawberry Problem
Language models fail spelling tests not because they cannot think, but because they have never once seen a letter.
 • Hugo
© 2026 Robonaissance · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start your SubstackGet the app
Substack is the home for writing, podcasting, and media founders.