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Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

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Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#211

Post by SonOfLilit »

dboreham wrote: post #207
SonOfLilit wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they'd be right that my intelligence is not as well distributed as theirs. But that's a specific feature of their intelligence, that's not general intelligence. If an octopus can beat me at Sokoban, I don't care whether it thinks with its brain or its arms, I would like to hire it as a programmer for my startup. If an octopus tries its best to play Sokoban, beats the tutorial but can't figure out the levels w…

John Searle Octopus Test

I assume you're referring to this? https://www.aclweb.org/anthology/2020.acl-main.463.pdf

Gotta say in my opinion it didn't age well for a paper published in 2020 (but pre GPT-3). In practice, we have an O that is pretty good at describing how to build weapons against bears despite having absolutely no idea what "weapon" or "bear" refers to.

But also, I don't seem to understand how this relates to the discussion, so can you help me there?

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#212

Post by tzs »

I've wondered about the difference in behavior of crows when they encounter humans at different kinds of places.

I put peanuts out on the rail of my deck for the squirrels (I've got Eastern grey squirrels and Douglas squirrels) and the Steller's jays. If I see crows around, I'll give them some too.

If I'm actually outside on the deck, even far away from where the peanuts are, the crows will not come get them. They wait for me to go in, then get the peanuts, then fly to a nearby tree to wait for me to come put out more peanuts.

I have never been aggressive in any way to the crows, and will toss peanuts to near the foot of the tree they are sitting in. They have also seen me giving peanuts to squirrels. The Eastern greys will run up to near me, and the Douglas' would take them right out of my hand if I let them, so the crows have plenty of evidence I'm happy to give away peanuts. But they will not get close.

Yet at nearby supermarkets and fast food places, they will walk around the parking lot looking for food and come right near people. They seem completely indifferent to people there, only reacting if someone happens to be walking or driving right toward them, then they casually move to the side.

They don't seem worried at all about the humans at those places. So why are they much more cautious about me at my house?

I wonder if they recognize houses are human nests, and so we might be a lot more touchy about other animals in the area, and so the crows are much more cautious than when they encounter us at the supermarket?

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#213

Post by chillacy »

zw123456 wrote: post #196
liveoneggs wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

crows and other birds are very good at recognizing faces so they absolutely know it's you

I do feel like they are my little buddies now. When ever I seem them I make a crowing sound. I think maybe they think I am a crazy bird. They are probably right. But, I weirdly feel like they are my friends. Hahaha.

Almost sounds like making offerings to a friendly god. How curious!

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#214

Post by SonOfLilit »

grawprog wrote: post #210
SonOfLilit wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, they'd be right that my intelligence is not as well distributed as theirs. But that's a specific feature of their intelligence, that's not general intelligence. If an octopus can beat me at Sokoban, I don't care whether it thinks with its brain or its arms, I would like to hire it as a programmer for my startup. If an octopus tries its best to play Sokoban, beats the tutorial but can't figure out the levels w…

I might be wrong, but I think the point of the parent comment was more along the lines of, the things we find to be 'general intelligence' may not be as general as we believe. Something like your sokoban or 2048 example, which you view as a thing that any being with general intelligence should be able to solve, may not be such general intelligence thing and more of a 'human specific' thing and we're too wrapped up in…

"General Intelligence" is a well defined term and there's a lot of literature on why it makes sense.

There are many human cognitive skills that seem to be very helpful for some specific tasks (e.g. noticing that someone is watching you, identifying the pitch of a strummed guitar string) but are not very useful in general, but others (e.g. analogous thinking) that we found to be relevant to a vast range of cognitive tasks. There are also tasks that require mostly the second kind of skill. An animal that can perform them well should be considered intelligent even if it doesn't have perfect pitch and can't notice that it's being watched. An animal that we can't get to perform them well may or may not be intelligent - perhaps we're not good at convincing it to try hard.

Some relevant links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) and also, I guess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc...

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#215

Post by patcon »

sharkweek wrote: post #26

My crow story, which I think I've mentioned on here before. We have young children, and thus the back of our car is always a little disgusting with things like goldfish crackers littered all over the floor and in-between the cracks of their car seats. We got in the habit of throwing the crumbs out onto the driveway when we got home. It didn't take long for us to notice anytime we pulled in, the crows would be lined u…

Neat! I wonder if a biologist might describe this type of behaviour (attacking perceived threats to the creature that produces your renewable food source) as primitive agriculture.

Maybe the crows were just tending to your children like livestock? ;)

People talk about ants practicing agriculture, but sounds like maybe these crows are making a foray into it as well :)

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#216

Post by patcon »

jancsika wrote: post #194
SonOfLilit wrote: post #18

Hopefully someone in the field will read this and be able to answer my question: I've spent a lot of time googling research about animal intelligence, and I now know a bunch of things intelligent animals can do, but I have no idea where their limits are, what they can't do. Everything published uses such... nonflexible tasks. If we're trying to measure general intelligence, why isn't anybody trying to teach corvids,…

> I know at least octopi can use computer screens, and I know they enjoy hard puzzles that reward them with food, so it should be easy to teach them some computer puzzle game? I'm not sure it's that easy. For example, suppose a race of hyperintelligent octopuses beam down and decide to study your intelligence. They notice in one test that if you begin scrambling eggs for breakfast and they cut off both your arms at t…

> "My, the intelligence in this species isn't very well-distributed," they and their tentacles agree.

And then maybe they conspire to orchestrate your firing from that cushy corporate office job. They note that you then go home and start working on your career skills, in hopes of joining another company.

"My, the intelligence of this creature is quite distributed," the tentacles and central brain agree, of the corporation.

See: https://dague.net/2018/01/09/slow-ai/

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#217

Post by noisy_boy »

jonplackett wrote: post #17

You can tell how much smarter crows are just by going to feed the ducks. The crows watch YOU and your arm, predict where you'll throw and move there in advance, often catching things in mid-air. It's not just reaction speed, they're watching really carefully and making guesses. The ducks are next on the spectrum, they spot it first (after it lands) and geese are the dumbest, the feed can hit them right in the head, a…

When I was young, we whould go to my grandpa's place during summer school holidays. He would go to the porch of his cottage every morning, call out to the crows shouting "kaaa... kaaa... kaaa..." and tossed pieces of bread in the air. Whole bunch of crows. They would be ready for this daily feeding frenzy and would catch every since piece of bread in the air without fail. It was a free animal acrobatics show that I never got tired of watching.

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#218

Post by codezero »

tomc1985 wrote: post #180
codezero wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can make up for it by uplifting their species with our technology. I sincerely believe we should be doing this - it's a core premise of one of my favorite novels: Sundiver: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundiver

Yet another way to dominate over the animal kingdom... lifting them up with tech increases their reliance on us, all while we reserve the right to take it away again

A very reasonable point, but I guess in my mind it would not be a master slave relationship, we should uplift them into sentience and allow them to use that technology to choose their own path. Obviously there is a lot of hubris there, but as a now ... semi sentient species, I prefer this over being eaten, and I think animals might express the same sentiment, as long as they don't murder us all for our sins :)

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#219

Post by patcon »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #18

Hopefully someone in the field will read this and be able to answer my question: I've spent a lot of time googling research about animal intelligence, and I now know a bunch of things intelligent animals can do, but I have no idea where their limits are, what they can't do. Everything published uses such... nonflexible tasks. If we're trying to measure general intelligence, why isn't anybody trying to teach corvids,…

This book might be of interest to you: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691145471/th...

Re: Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute

#220

Post by bagels »

jungans wrote: post #187
Damorian wrote: post #121

One particularly early, groggy morning I was walking into work and there were a few crows pecking around the grass by the sidewalk. Lost in my thoughts I hear a raspy old man say, "good morning". I look around and don't see anyone, then I look at one of the crows and it looks me right in the eye and repeats, "good morning". I doubted my sanity for a few days before confiding in my wife what happened and was surprised…

I'll just leave this here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ISE6R_-b3A

A less vulgar bird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfsnHVaScjg
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