![]() ![]() Once you get past a certain level, it doesn't really entice you anymore."īut now, he said, "this AI is going to put up a fight." "Gran Turismo had a built-in AI existing from the beginning of the game, but it has a very narrow band of performance and it isn't very good," said Michael Spranger, chief operating officer of Sony AI. Gran Turismo players have been competing against computer-generated race cars since the franchise launched in the 1990s, but the new AI driver that was unleashed last week on Gran Turismo 7 is smarter and faster because it's been trained using the latest AI methods. The technique of using the draft of an opponent's racecar to speed up and overtake them is one favored by skilled players of PlayStation's realistic racing game.īut this Corvette driver is not being controlled by a human - it's GT Sophy, a powerful artificial intelligence agent built by PlayStation-maker Sony. By day three, even the dominant male of the group had its tracker successfully dismantled.SAN FRANCISCO - Speed around a French village in the video game Gran Turismo and you might spot a Corvette behind you trying to catch your slipstream. Within hours, most of the other trackers had been removed. Within 10 minutes of fitting the final tracker, we witnessed an adult female without a tracker working with her bill to try and remove the harness off of a younger bird. These birds also breed cooperatively, with older siblings helping to raise young.ĭuring our pilot study, we found out how quickly magpies team up to solve a group problem. As a generalist species that excels in problem solving, it has adapted well to the extreme changes to its habitat from humans.Īustralian magpies generally live in social groups of between two and 12 individuals, cooperatively occupying and defending their territory through song choruses and aggressive behaviours (such as swooping). In fact, cognitive ability and social cooperation has been found to correlate.Īnimals living in larger groups tend to have an increased capacity for problem solving, such as hyenas, spotted wrasse, and house sparrows.Īustralian magpies are no exception. Many animals that live in societies cooperate with one another to ensure the health, safety and survival of the group. All we had to do was wait, and watch, and then lure the birds back to the station to gather the valuable data. How far did magpies go? Did they have patterns or schedules throughout the day in terms of movement, and socialising? How did age, sex or dominance rank affect their activities?Īll this could be uncovered using the tiny trackers - weighing less than one gram - we successfully fitted five of the magpies with. We wanted to see if the new design would work as planned, and discover what kind of data we could gather. We were excited by the design, as it opened up many possibilities for efficiency and enabled a lot of data to be collected. To remove the harness, one needed that magnet, or some really good scissors. ![]() ![]() The harness was tough, with only one weak point where the magnet could function. This is the reason we often require pilot studies. Expired substances, failing equipment, contaminated samples, an unplanned power outage - these can all set back months (or even years) of carefully planned research.įor those of us who study animals, and especially behaviour, unpredictability is part of the job description. Testing exciting new devicesĪs academic scientists, we're accustomed to experiments going awry in one way or another. While we're familiar with magpies being intelligent and social creatures, this was the first instance we knew of that showed this type of seemingly altruistic behaviour: helping another member of the group without getting an immediate, tangible reward. ![]() Instead, the birds outsmarted us.Īs our new research paper explains, the magpies began showing evidence of cooperative "rescue" behaviour to help each other remove the tracker. Our goal was to learn more about the movement and social dynamics of these highly intelligent birds, and to test these new, durable and reusable devices. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |