Basically they got three robots, told them that two of them were given “dumbing pills”, and they asked one which pill it was given.
The robot of course wasn’t sure if it had or hadn’t yet and said “I don’t know”, but after it looked at the other silent robots (who were actually unable to speak from the start), it realized that its fully functional, and then was finally able to say “I know now.”
It can assess itself and its behavior in relation to other robots and people. It can make that differentiation between “me” and “I”, and understand that it is an individual.
People are shrugging this off, but this is a similar self-awareness test to how people put mirrors in front of animals to see if it treats the reflection like another animal or treat it like a reflection.
