Encounter with alien intelligence in my backyard

I am equally passionate about the future of humans with AI and the future of the ocean with humans.  Most of us have encountered alien intelligence based on silicon. In this post I’m happy to share something about the intelligence of a creature that is a squishy blob of protein.

Of course, I’m talking about an octopus.  We are very lucky to be able to interact with them here in Maui, and so I did a little experiment to investigate an aspect of their intelligence.

We caught it doing something on video that I could not find in the scientific literature. 

For two consecutive days, a wild Hawaiian Day Octopus (Octopus cyanea in Latin, he’e in Hawaiian) returned to interact with a mirror in its natural habitat. It changed color and texture on only ONE side of its body—white and textured facing the mirror, red and smooth on the opposite side. It reached behind the mirror repeatedly, testing for another octopus, and when the mirror was lifted, it could verify that there was no other octopus. Yet it maintained interest in the mirror and continued mirror-specific displays for over an hour over two days. 

Scientists who study animal intelligence use a mirror test to assess a special kind of intelligence: self-awareness. Only great apes, dolphins, elephants, and magpies consistently pass the mirror test. Dogs and monkeys do not.  Previous octopus studies were inconclusive.  There is no published account of testing this species with the mirror test for self-awareness.  

What’s the tie-in with AI?  Self-awareness is a pivotal feature in intelligent entities.  Once you have self-awareness, you are on the way to consciousness and sentience, although this path is mired in philosophical hazards.  But if even some octopuses are potentially more self-aware than our favorite pets and laboratory victims, then we have a case study in “other minds” (Godfrey-Smith), an alien intelligence that evolved from a very different substrate (mollusks).

So, while this video is not a scientific result, I offer it as at least a cocktail party anecdata-point to argue why self-aware intelligence should be considered substrate-independent.  If you want to really go deep on this subject, read Blaise Aguera y Arcas What is Intelligence? 

Enjoy.  And please stop eating these animals.