Written in SCIENCE he
Often underestimated for their simplicity and their role in popular culture, pigeons have proven to be surprisingly adept at classifying complex visual stimuli, in a study which highlights their ability to learn and make decisions. In an analysis titled “The pigeon as a machine”, carried out by researchers from the University of Iowa and Ohio University, it was discovered that the process used by pigeons to make decisions is remarkably similar to the artificial intelligence (AI) approach to making sound decisions.
It is common to make fun of pigeons for his “little brain“and their fame as bearers of messages, but this study reveals that his brain houses amazingly effective mechanisms. The pigeons have proven to be experts at classifying visual stimuli, from images of everyday objects such as flowers, trees, dogs, phones and shoes to medical images such as human breast tissue and heart muscle. They have even demonstrated the ability to identify printed numbers and letters, as well as works of art by famous painters, such as Monet.
He study has led scientists to rethink their perception of these birds. By being able to understand abstract concepts and perform complex visual tasks, pigeons They have proven to be much more intelligent than they were given credit for. This result leads to the conclusion that we should give the pigeonsand possibly other birds, more respect than they usually receive.
What makes pigeons smarter than we thought?
The key behind the amazing ability of pigeons to make correct decisions lies in a simple associative mechanism. In it studyat 24 pigeons They were given various visual tasks and, over days or weeks, learned to classify them. The stimuli presented included lines of different sizes, locations and orientations, concentric rings, numbers and letters, and the pigeons they had to touch a touch screen to classify them correctly.
What was surprising was that the pigeons They did not require a set of fixed rules for making decisions. They learned by trial and error, and when presented with a stimulus, they classified it based on how similar it was to its corresponding category. Over time, his accuracy increased, demonstrating his ability to make correct decisions in a wide variety of situations.
He study It also highlights the similarity between the decision-making process of the pigeons and the artificial intelligence approach. AI models, such as the popular chatbot ChatGPT, are trained to recognize patterns and make decisions by searching for patterns in large data sets. Just like the pigeons, AI improves with feedback and trial-and-error learning. Both use similar mechanisms to classify stimuli and make correct decisions.
The researchers suggest that these mechanisms are fundamental for intelligence, whether in pigeons or in artificial intelligence systems. The studies Future efforts will focus on better understanding how these mechanisms work and how they are applied in other fields, such as neuroscience. He brain of the pigeonsdespite its relatively small size, proves to be exceptionally capable in terms of learning and decision making.