Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Machines could never...

"Pigeons outperform humans at the Monty Hall Dilemma", Blogs / Not Exactly Rocket Science Accessed April 6 2010


Apparently, in specific cases, pigeons are smarter than us. Smarter than me. 


Next time you read a gee whizz article about artificial intelligence and scoff, thinking "A Machine could never do that" remember the pigeons. There is some crazy notion that human intelligence is somehow above and beyond anything that can come from the animal or digital kingdoms. It just isn't so. Animal and Digital intelligences are different, optimised for survival in different environments, that's all. It takes us a while to recognise it. I suspect real AI's will be with us for some time, probably in the form of distributed botnets harvesting bank accounts, long before anyone recognises them as such.


Reference: Herbranson, W., & Schroeder, J. (2010). Are birds smarter than mathematicians? Pigeons (Columba livia) perform optimally on a version of the Monty Hall Dilemma. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 124 (1), 1-13 DOI: 10.1037/a0017703

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