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Back in college I did a paper on if this was ethical or not for my bioethics class, I warn people to really take a step back from the positive possibilities with something like this and understand that these are wild animals being trained to become slaves to benefit our human failings and appetites. I would definitely draw a line between this kind of domestication and the domestication of animals by our ancestors for…
This may also train smokers who do throw away their butts to instead think it's ok to throw them anywhere.
Why not also start enforcing littering fines? A $270-$500 ticket should be help to incentivize a behavior change.
Or you know, we could get rid of cigarettes. Oh wait but what will happen to all the crow jobs?!
But at least I guess it would stop people smoking in public.
Also http://www.thecrowbox.com/ were they apparently trained captive crows to pickup coins in return for food, there's also a TED talk the guy behind it gave. I've briefly looked at the 'Crowded Cities' page, I'm still not sure how the crows realise they get food though for cigarette butts? Does it rely on them randomly dropping something in the pot, and then getting food and continuing to do it?
Bonus points when the crows learn they can speed up the process by dive bombing a smoker, causing them to run away in terror, dropping their cigarette in the process.
In Southeast Asia thugs have been training monkeys to steal wallets, cellphones and cameras from tourists. We might get some know how from them.
Back in college I did a paper on if this was ethical or not for my bioethics class, I warn people to really take a step back from the positive possibilities with something like this and understand that these are wild animals being trained to become slaves to benefit our human failings and appetites. I would definitely draw a line between this kind of domestication and the domestication of animals by our ancestors for…
The crows aren't punished for not exhibiting this behavior. Positive reinforcement training is distinctively different than negative reinforcement training. Slavery is the latter
Also http://www.thecrowbox.com/ were they apparently trained captive crows to pickup coins in return for food, there's also a TED talk the guy behind it gave. I've briefly looked at the 'Crowded Cities' page, I'm still not sure how the crows realise they get food though for cigarette butts? Does it rely on them randomly dropping something in the pot, and then getting food and continuing to do it?
I wonder if humans could bootstrap the process by modeling the behaviour? Crows are supposed to be mega-smart, so maybe they'd pick up on that and emulate us.
Maybe you could start by having a bin of 'butts next to the Crowbar so they can get some early, quick reinforcement, then when they run out they'll move on to harder challenges.
Is there someone here who's done enough video game design that they could comment on how lessons learned from training / reinforcing players in games could be leveraged here?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The crows aren't punished for not exhibiting this behavior. Positive reinforcement training is distinctively different than negative reinforcement training. Slavery is the latter
I really don't think it matters if it's positive or negative reinforcement. You are making their trained survival dependent on a contraption which accepts trash for their services, that doesn't sound like room and board to you?
No, sounds like a job: do a task, get a reward. You do it, janitors do it. If the crows want...