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Bees can link symbols to numbers, study finds
- amelius 7y agoHow do we know the bees don't simply use a learned lookup-table rather than doing arithmetic? During evaluation, did they present the bees with problems that they didn't see before?
- gpderetta 7y agoHow do we know that humans do not? My mental process for simple arithmetic does seem to involve multiple something that feels like lookup tables.
- edna314 7y agoYes, the difference is that you can synthesize numbers which are not (yet) in the look up table. It would be super amazing if one could show that bees are capable of doing that.
- vageli 7y ago> Yes, the difference is that you can synthesize numbers which are not (yet) in the look up table. It would be super amazing if one could show that bees are capable of doing that. Or rather, we can synthesize lookup tables from preexisting lookup tables.
- ChristianBundy 7y agoSure, but that extrapolation is called arithmetic.
- lelf 7y agoBut where is the line between a “learned lookup-table” and “actually doing arithmetic”? Especially considering how numbers were presented to bees = number of shapes in a square (look at the second paper in my other comment).
- maxxxxx 7y agoI use a lookup table for arithmetic. Figuring out 5*3 would take me a long time if I didn’t know already.
- kowdermeister 7y agoExactly, that's why it takes an awkward long time multiplying two numbers greater than 10 in my head, anything less is instant.
- maxxxxx 7y agoI am sure there is an algorithm to split the problem into smaller parts until you can use your lookup table :). Just use it multiple times.
- lawlessone 7y ago>How do we know the bees don't simply use a learned lookup-table That was basically how i was taught times tables in school as a child, and many others.
- taneq 7y agoYeah, do they not teach times tables in school these days? O.o
- elliekelly 7y agoI’m not sure if they teach the times tables anymore but the way they teach math has certainly changed a lot since I was in middle school. I volunteer as an after-school tutor and I have a really hard time when kids bring me the “common core” multiplication and long division. The kids do actually seem to learn math better with their criss crossy drawings that they do to “solve” the problems but I can’t wrap my brain around it.
- circlefavshape 7y agoThey do teach times tables in schools still, at least in Ireland
- romwell 7y ago>How do we know the bees don't simply use a learned lookup-table? Perhaps by reading the freely available original paper[0], where we find that the bees were tested on samples with randomized positions, and which included shapes previously unseen by bees. So the bees aren't using lookup tables to count. We all, though, use lookup tables to map numbers to single digits: that's by definition. The digit 7 represents this many objects: * * * * * *; you need to memorize this after you learn to count. The experiment doesn't establish the bees' ability to parse decimal notation (mapping numbers to character strings). [0]https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2019.0238 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2019...
- amelius 7y ago> which included shapes previously unseen by bees This only shows that bees can abstract away from the actual shapes, not that they actually count.
- menzoic 7y agoReminds me of Neil deGrasse Tyson's comments on the "intelligence gap". If bees can do this, how smart are we really? Compared to generally intelligent AI or extraterrestrials, the difference between our intelligence and a bees might not be much. https://youtu.be/Tt0uV5d8tss https://youtu.be/Tt0uV5d8tss
- BlackDinosaur 7y agothat's an interesting thought tbh
- maxxxxx 7y agoI always think what the perspectives of a being that could live for millions of years and had the computing power and memory and sensors of all of Earths machines would be. I don’t think we could even comprehend the thoughts of this being.
- SantalBlush 7y agoI suspect that being would get insufferably bored.
- vageli 7y agoYou are thinking too small.
- maxxxxx 7y agoNot more or less than you within the constraints you live in.
- arethuza 7y ago"I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side. We are quicker; we live faster and more completely than you do, with so many more senses, such a greater store of memories and at such a fine level of detail. We die more slowly, and we die more completely, too." Although, based on the novels I suspect the jump from a bee to human level intelligence is probably rather small compared to that from a human to a Mind.
- lelf 7y agoNon-paywalled papers: • Symbolic representation of numerosity by honeybees (Apis mellifera): matching characters to small quantities https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.0238 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2019.023... • Numerical cognition in honeybees enables addition and subtraction https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/2/eaav0961 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/2/eaav0961
- tr33house 7y agobees can link symbols to symbols?
- romwell 7y agoNo. Small quantities are represented with previously unseen symbols in randomized positions. This is what numbers are (cardinals, or equivalence classes of sets under bijection, if you wish). So bees can count.
- eddd 7y agoyou don't need many neurons to do MNIST.
- empath75 7y agoSeems like one set of researchers has had two breakthrough studies of bee intelligence. Has anyone reproduced this? I feel like for something this incredible, we should perhaps wait until another team can reproduce the results before getting too excited.
- palijer 7y agoI expect one of these days I'll see an article titled "Bees proven to be Turing-Complete"
- yters 7y agoDon't most animals have the ability to learn associations? E.g. when the leash jingles the dog knows it is time to go for a walk. Not sure this is the same as humans doing arithmetic. Scientists seem quite anxious to make the jump from associations to human level abstract thought, for some reason. Not saying it is impossible, but these kinds of studies seem very handwavy and not very careful with terminology.
- nathan_long 7y agoI think the "abstract" part here was the concept of "three-ness" or "two-ness" - that the bees could see something that represents 3 and correctly choose the path with three shapes, regardless of what the shapes were.
- yters 7y agoBased on the picture of the experiment setup in the article, it's hard to infer the bee understands 'three-ness'. Based on this reasoning, does the bee already understand 'flowerness' since it knows to get nectar from many different kinds of flowers? Do dogs understand 'dogness' because they know to sniff the butt of any dog that crosses their path? Pretty sure I can create a simple AI that can distinguish three of something under many different kinds and orientations within suitable constraints, and have that capability associated with another easily distinguishable visual code. Yet, I would never say I've made my computer understand 'threeness', as the computer has no abstract reasoning capabilities whatsoever. In general, how do we know when something understands '____ness' in the way we understand '____ness'? Per my previous examples, either the article's meaning is trivial, or unsubstantiated.
- romwell 7y agoHow about you just look at the paper?[0] The positions of symbols were randomized, and they used symbols previously unseen by bees. The concept of three-ness (as a cardinal number) is just that: being able to identify sets of objects which can be put into 1-to-1 correspondence with the following set of asterisks: * * * . The bees, according to the experiment, can do that. Is this our understanding of three-ness? Maybe not; there's also the notion of ordinals (as in 3 is what follows 2, 2 is what follows 1, and 1 is where you start). We have at least two different notions for numbers. But the notion tested in the paper is good enough to do most mathematics with (cardinals and ordinals are kind of the same until you reach infinity). [0]https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2019.0238 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2019...
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago>> Researchers have trained honeybees to match a character to a specific quantity, revealing they are able to learn that a symbol represents a numerical amount. I don't know if this is very convincing. From what I see in the images shown in the article, the "specific quantities" are represented by different arrangements of various symbols- squares, stars etc. The article doesn't say whether these arrangements were randomised in each image. For instance - the number "3" could be _always_ associated with the same arrangement of any symbol. Say, a triangle formed by three identical symbol. In that case it would be impossible to know whether the bees learned to count the shapes or just identify their arrangment. Learning to identify a triangle doesn't say anything about the ability to identify quantities. The fact that neither of the two groups trained on the two different tasks (character-to-quantity and quantity-to-character) could generalise their learning to the opposite task also doesn't bode well. It is exactly what you would expect to see if the setup for each task had some other, uncontrolled for, variable that the bees "overfitted" to, rather than learning what is theorised they did learn.
- ordu 7y ago> The article doesn't say whether these arrangements were randomised in each image. It is a popular science retelling a story. In the original scientific article we can read We used sets of stimuli with controlled surface area (set 1) and equal element size area (set 2) with achromatic properties (black elements on white background; electronic supplementary material, figure S1). The choice of stimuli for each trial was pseudo-randomized with regards to set (1 or 2), shape and arrangement of elements. Thus, bees were trained on both set 1 and set 2. In Group 1, this test consisted of showing a sign as the sample and then a randomized set of abstract objects not previously seen by bees (set 3: random set with chromatic properties). Your proposed possible mistake is a way too stupid for a modern experimental psychology. > For instance - the number "3" could be _always_ associated with the same arrangement of any symbol. Say, a triangle formed by three identical symbol. It is more interesting, I believe. I had not read the original article thoroughly enough to find out could this be as you describe. There is a figures with some stimuli, but I'm not sure that it contains all the stimuli (to be sure it needs more reading, not just skimming). Maybe this issue needs more testing, but in any case it is impossible to catch all the mistakes like that. For example, our ability to see a figure formed by a changing symbols, it is a property of our visual processing. Bees could have some properties which we do not have, and it could be that their properties could allow them to see some shapes formed by symbols, where we could see just randomly placed symbols. > The fact that neither of the two groups trained on the two different tasks (character-to-quantity and quantity-to-character) could generalise their learning to the opposite task also doesn't bode well. It is exactly what you would expect to see if the setup for each task had some other, uncontrolled for, variable that the bees "overfitted" to, rather than learning what is theorised they did learn. Yes, it is the most interesting part, because it goes perpendicular to a common sense, and thus gives a direction to a subsequent research. It always work like this: an experiment (a good one does) reveals something about nature, but poses new questions. Then researchers all over the world start to spend their grants on a sequels for the first research. At some point the number of articles becomes overwhelming, and several especially proficient scientists read all of them, studying methodology, combining data from different research into one big data set, making statistics, and finally they'd write a meta-research with a few hundreds of references to experimental articles, trying to make sense of data. Media just cherry-picking articles with a clickbait titles, and makes them even more clickbaity. The most interesting articles for a newcomer would be a meta-research articles, which do no sparky experiments itself, but analyze all the data they could reach.
- jpkane 7y agoThese creatures never cease to amaze me.