Can a True Mirror Help Teach AI to Understand Us?
Exploring the True Mirror as a Test for Artificial General Intelligence
We just released a short proposal with a surprising idea:
What if a the True Mirror could reveal the limits of current AI—and help shape what artificial general intelligence (AGI) needs to become in order to get past these limits.
Click here to read the full paper (PDF)
The True Mirror is an optically accurate, non-reversing mirror (NRM) that shows your face as others see it—no left-right flip, no distortion. Built from two perfectly aligned front-surface mirrors at 90°, it lets you make real eye contact with yourself and see your natural expressions in real time. It's a simple idea but also creating something brand new in the world, both physically as well as psychologically.
Here’s the twist: AI image generators today can’t even draw one.
Despite their enormous power, systems like DALL·E and Midjourney consistently fail to depict a correct True Mirror. They get the angles wrong. They misplace the seam. They flip the reflection. This isn’t just a rendering issue—it’s a cognitive miss. AI doesn’t yet grasp how light, perception, and identity interact in the physical world.
And that’s why the True Mirror could be a powerful benchmark.
To truly model what someone sees—and more importantly, experiences—in a True Mirror requires more than data and pattern-matching. It requires an understanding of bilateral facial expression, of eye contact, of real-time emotional resonance. It’s not just an optics problem—it’s a perception problem. A consciousness problem. And when an AGI system finally gets it, we may have reached a turning point in its ability to perceive the world as we do.