4 ms·

That's really cool! Here's a similar study that showed pigeons could "learn" the solution to the Monty Hall problem http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/com/124/1

That's really cool! Here's a similar study that showed pigeons could "learn" the solution to the Monty Hall problem http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/com/124/1/1 http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/com/124/1/1 The whole point of this problem is that it is counter-intuitive for humans -- but I don't think birds naturally have intuition for this kind of problem, so they solve it without bias, purely from observed probabilities. I wonder if it's useful to think of pigeon learning like a machine learning algorithm -- after being shown examples of images that are classified according to some relatively simple but unknown boolean function, the pigeons can predict the value of that function on new examples.

yareally 11y ago
> I wonder if it's useful to think of pigeon learning like a machine learning algorithm -- after being shown examples of images that are classified according to some relatively simple but unknown boolean function, the pigeons can predict the value of that function on new examples. Not sure about pigeons unless the images were simple enough, but crows, jays or parrots might be able to do that. My concern with pigeons is they might not have enough of the abstract/critical thinking abilities the other 3 bird species have. I could be underestimating them, but I'd probably put my bets on crows figuring it out before a pigeon. Though crows, jays and parrots are also smart enough to get bored after a while, so they might not be up to the task New Caledonia Crows are smart enough to use "meta tools" where the tool they're using is only a step towards their end goal. They've been observed using smaller sticks to reach for a larger stick that will allow them to reach a piece of food. Crows (in general) also have awesome memories and will remember the faces of people who were mean or nice to them years later while also passing it on to their offspring (who have never seen this person before). In a lab study, jays were shown to cache food if they knew they won't find food early in the morning the next day. If they knew they have a meal waiting for them the next day, they would cache less or not at all. I know there's parrots that have been trained to open up locked boxes where certain randomly assigned locks are redundant. The parrots will ignore the redundant locks and only open the ones that are being used. http://www.washington.edu/news/2012/09/10/crows-react-to-threats-in-human-like-way/ http://www.washington.edu/news/2012/09/10/crows-react-to-thr... link to the paper on crow facial recognition: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/39/15912.full http://www.pnas.org/content/109/39/15912.full
mikevansnell 11y ago
And we all thought PigeonRank was a joke: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7939208/Top-10-technology-hoaxes.html?image=3 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7939208/Top-10-technol...

yareally 11y ago

> I wonder if it's useful to think of pigeon learning like a machine learning algorithm -- after being shown examples of images that are classified according to some relatively simple but unknown boolean function, the pigeons can predict the value of that function on new examples. Not sure about pigeons unless the images were simple enough, but crows, jays or parrots might be able to do that. My concern with pigeons is they might not have enough of the abstract/critical thinking abilities the other 3 bird species have. I could be underestimating them, but I'd probably put my bets on crows figuring it out before a pigeon. Though crows, jays and parrots are also smart enough to get bored after a while, so they might not be up to the task New Caledonia Crows are smart enough to use "meta tools" where the tool they're using is only a step towards their end goal. They've been observed using smaller sticks to reach for a larger stick that will allow them to reach a piece of food. Crows (in general) also have awesome memories and will remember the faces of people who were mean or nice to them years later while also passing it on to their offspring (who have never seen this person before). In a lab study, jays were shown to cache food if they knew they won't find food early in the morning the next day. If they knew they have a meal waiting for them the next day, they would cache less or not at all. I know there's parrots that have been trained to open up locked boxes where certain randomly assigned locks are redundant. The parrots will ignore the redundant locks and only open the ones that are being used. http://www.washington.edu/news/2012/09/10/crows-react-to-threats-in-human-like-way/ http://www.washington.edu/news/2012/09/10/crows-react-to-thr... link to the paper on crow facial recognition: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/39/15912.full http://www.pnas.org/content/109/39/15912.full

mikevansnell 11y ago

And we all thought PigeonRank was a joke: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7939208/Top-10-technology-hoaxes.html?image=3 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7939208/Top-10-technol...