Science!

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Büge
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Re: Science!

Postby Büge » Tue Jan 09, 2018 9:44 pm

Mongrel wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/jul/03/research.science
All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean.

Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on.

Her cunning has not stopped there. One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins.


*squints*

An article from 2003. I can't help but wonder if Kelly the dolphin is even still alive.
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Friday
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Re: Science!

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 09, 2018 10:10 pm

God forbid we ever reward dolphins with fish for murdering a person

it'll be the end
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Re: Science!

Postby Friday » Tue Jan 09, 2018 10:26 pm

"After we rewarded Sally with a large amount of fish for murdering her trainer, she began to hide subsequent trainers under a rock in her pool. But her cunning did not stop there. Late at night, she would sneak into nearby houses and steal babies to hide under the rock, and imitate their calls. When humans inevitably dove into the water, Sally would hide them under her rock. After teaching this behavior to her calves, Sally hid her calves under a rock. When we began to reward Sally with rocks for fish, Sally began to hide rocks under fish, but her cunning did not end there. Late at night, Sally would sneak into a rock and hide under a fish. When we began to reward Sally with trainers for rocks, Sally worked out that 1 trainer = 1.56 fish, and 4.32 fish = 65.29 rocks. After teaching her calves algebra, some of her calves began to cut class and go out smoking pot, so Sally began hiding the pot under a rock. But her calves cunning did not end there. They began hiding Sally under a fish, which was hidden under a rock. When her calves figured out that 1 pot = you're going to do heroin, they began doing heroin (1.567 fish)"
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Yoji
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Re: Science!

Postby Yoji » Tue Jan 09, 2018 10:35 pm

I think Kelly died in 2009, but Google says bottlenose dolphins can live for 40 years in the wild.

Also, these things are too smart. Never trust a creature that smiles all the time.
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Re: Science!

Postby Niku » Wed Jan 10, 2018 12:31 am

When the lady and I did a behind-the-scenes day at the aquarium down in Galveston for my birthday last year, we met a sea lion who had been trained the same way to bring fake plants to the trainers whenever they fell into the water so that none of the other sea lions would mistake them for actual food and potentially choke. I can only imagine what six months of cunning has done for him.

(Nothing. Nothing at all, because sea lions are just big dumb sweet water dogs and not MONSTERS like dolphins.)
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Re: Science!

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jan 15, 2018 5:57 pm

Cracked: In 1992, a well-intentioned biotech firm almost killed all plant life on earth*

*Only "potentially", according to relevant GMO interests.
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Re: Science!

Postby Mongrel » Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:12 pm

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Re: Science!

Postby Mongrel » Sun Jan 28, 2018 4:57 pm

Wired: Tesla's (and Volvo's) autopilot technology can't "see" a fire truck stopped in your lane (and in fact in some cases your car may ACCELERATE towards the stopped vehicle. This is actually on purpose, because apparently they can't figure out how to make autopilot work without doing so.
And it's not much of a problem if every human in a semi-autonomous vehicle followed the automakers' explicit, insistent instructions to pay attention at all times, and take back control if they see a stationary vehicle up ahead.

Uh.

Elon, we may have a problem here.

Telling people that they have to pay attention at all times and be prepared to take over for the AI is way worse than just telling people that they have to drive the car at all times and that there is no AI.
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Re: Science!

Postby Thad » Mon Jan 29, 2018 12:13 am

I think the "autopilot" branding was an extremely foolish move.

It's technically correct, because anybody who's actually a pilot knows that "autopilot" doesn't mean you can take your hands off the controls or stop paying attention.

The problem is that most people are not pilots and think "autopilot" means something different from what it actually does, because most people get their ideas of how technology works by watching fucking television.

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Re: Science!

Postby Grath » Mon Jan 29, 2018 10:16 am

Mongrel wrote:Telling people that they have to pay attention at all times and be prepared to take over for the AI is way worse than just telling people that they have to drive the car at all times and that there is no AI.

This is why Waymo (the Google self driving car) is 100%-AI-only from the start; they started with AI-assisted driving like the Tesla "autopilot", then caught a lot of the testers not paying attention and said "okay no, this is unsafe, it's all or nothing".

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zaratustra
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Re: Science!

Postby zaratustra » Mon Jan 29, 2018 10:19 am

couldn't they have some sort of signal then
like "hey I detected a thing in front of me i'm gonna keep going forward but you should probably check"

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Re: Science!

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jan 29, 2018 4:13 pm

What I'm curious about now is that if Google's Waymo IS able to deal with situations like this, what shape does Waymo's process tree for doing so look like?

Because two other, separate companies with different engineering teams came across this same problem and both dealt with it in the same (terrifying) way, but if Waymo DOESN'T do this, then clearly there IS a solution using current technology.
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Re: Science!

Postby Grath » Mon Jan 29, 2018 5:54 pm

Mongrel wrote:What I'm curious about now is that if Google's Waymo IS able to deal with situations like this, what shape does Waymo's process tree for doing so look like?

Because two other, separate companies with different engineering teams came across this same problem and both dealt with it in the same (terrifying) way, but if Waymo DOESN'T do this, then clearly there IS a solution using current technology.

To my understanding, the Tesla/Volvo system is "match speeds with the car in front of you using front-facing radar of some kind and also navigate using cameras" being built off stuff like adaptive cruise control where Waymo's system is "actually look at and process everything around you with lidar and don't just go for RAMMING SPEED if I don't see something in directly in front of me"

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Re: Science!

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jan 29, 2018 6:19 pm

That (Tesla/Volvo's systems) actually sounds LESS like actual autopilot (i.e. in the airliner sense), than just... adaptive cruise control.

Which is what they should have fucking called it.
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Re: Science!

Postby beatbandito » Mon Jan 29, 2018 6:39 pm

Waymo uses captcha technology in real time. Right when the car in front of you moves to avoid the fire truck, someone trying to buy PUBG on GMG will have to identify which parts of the image are firetruck for you to avoid it.
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Re: Science!

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jan 29, 2018 6:50 pm

xD

Dammit beat I can't laugh like this when my throat still hurts this bad.
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Re: Science!

Postby Blossom » Mon Jan 29, 2018 8:40 pm

I feel like Adaptive Cruise Control being unable to detect a stationary object, be that a fire truck or anything else, is a fundamental failure of the technology. Surely it should be able to detect that the closest thing in front of it is moving at 0mph and attempt to change lanes?
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Re: Science!

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jan 29, 2018 9:22 pm

Well, we're just igi'rant plebes and not bleeding edge engineers. I mean, the scientists always know better in the movies, right? I know how this works!
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Re: Science!

Postby Grath » Mon Jan 29, 2018 11:22 pm

beatbandito wrote:Waymo uses captcha technology in real time. Right when the car in front of you moves to avoid the fire truck, someone trying to buy PUBG on GMG will have to identify which parts of the image are firetruck for you to avoid it.

I mean it isn't real time, but that is actually why Captcha asks you to identify vehicles and road signs and such now. Waymo and working on improving the ability to auto-ingest map information from Streetview (and probably other stuff that I don't know about.)

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Re: Science!

Postby Thad » Wed Jan 31, 2018 8:14 pm

I have mixed feelings on those Captchas.

On the one hand, I object to Google putting me to work training its algorithm for no pay.

On the other hand, not being T-boned by a Waymo kind of IS a form of payment.

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