Who’s a clever Polly then?
THE eyes of the world will be on London today for the coronation of King Charles III. At 74, he is at an age when most people would have been well into their retirement.
Many wonder what the role of a monarchy should be in a world where we strive for equality based on merit, rather than an accident of birth.
South Africa has a history that has been tainted because of accidents of birth: first race, and now ethno-political affinity.
The British monarchy has a bizarre resonance in this country, just as it does on all the many other countries that were once part of the British empire.
Our own president, Cyril Ramaphosa, who has been absent in most of our recent crises, will be absent again tomorrow, having eschewed one of the rare invitations to instead do some real work, ostensibly, helping bring peace to the troubled African Great Lakes region.
In truth, he won’t be missed – either at Westminster Abbey or the Union Buildings. We will have other South Africans there; from our own Princess Charlene of Monaco to opera singer Pretty Yende and, of course, our treasures (literally) will be front and centre later today, with the fist-sized 500carat diamond, the Cullinan
I, in the state sceptre, and the slightly smaller Cullinan II in the State Crown.
Charles will have his work cut out seeking relevance in a world that is dramatically different to the one his mother reigned over.
But he has proved throughout his life to be a profoundly thoughtful and kind man.
We wish him everything of the best and hope he will be a good king for his subjects.
Perhaps he can start by returning our diamonds?
ELEANOR wanted to call a friend, so she scanned her contacts and touched a picture of Rosie, whom she had met last summer.
Instead of speaking on the call, the pair communicated in different ways: singing, dancing and preening.
Eleanor and Rosie were participants in a new study to judge how pet parrots would respond to video calling other parrots. Researchers said the 18 monitored birds loved seeing their feathered friends over a screen and it provided them with a sense of community that pets typically lack.
Companionship has been shown to increase people’s happiness, and this study found it adds joy to parrots’ lives, too.
“Part of the fun thing for me, and surprising thing, was how these parrots sort of bonded together,” said researcher Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas.
“They did want to video call each other; they did have preferences. All of this stuff just really speaks to how cognitively complex these parrots are, which we don’t necessarily think of when we think of parrots.”
The study’s researchers had previously explored technology’s value to animals. Hirskyj-Douglas invented
DogPhone, a ball that dogs can shake to call their owners. Another researcher, Rébecca Kleinberger, created Joy Branch, which allows zoo animals to play music in their pens. Jennifer Cunha has developed tablet games for parrots.
The trio wanted to explore how they could enrich birds’ lives through communication. Pet parrots are vulnerable to avian ganglioneuritis, a deadly disease contagious among birds, which can make it dangerous for pets to interact with their species, researchers said.
“A lot of them only live around humans and are very closely bonded with their humans, but that can also cause problems,” said Kleinberger, a music and computer science professor at Northeastern University.
For the video-calling study, researchers selected volunteers to take care of the parrots through Parrot Kindergarten, a Florida learning programme that Cunha runs.
The first hurdle was to ensure that the parrots recognised other parrots through a screen. Analysts worried that the parrots would act aggressively, but most remained calm when the video calls began.
At first, the parrots were confused, looking behind the tablet and trying to follow the other parrot through the screen. But after a few days, they appeared to recognise that the opposite parrot was in a different room, researchers said.
Caregivers trained their parrots to ring a bell to request a video call. When they chimed it, their owner delivered a tablet or smartphone and displayed pictures of the other parrots through Facebook Messenger. The parrots then used their beaks to tap the picture of a bird, and their owners started a call with the selected parrot.
A few parrots walked off, flew away or gawked, prompting the call to end. But others seemed to enjoy their newfound social life.
Parrots developed friends they frequently chose to call – and the ones who frequently dialled other parrots received the most calls.
Once connected, they often mimicked each other and bonded through preening, eating, dancing, singing and showing off their toys. When one tried to hang upside down, the other did, too. Sometimes, they napped together. Some parrots saw their own species for the first time in decades.
The parrots completed 212 calls, which lasted no more than five minutes, over the initial two-week testing period.
“There’ve been papers that speculate about the animal internet,” said Hirskyj-Douglas, who teaches animal and computer interactions at the University of Glasgow. “But this is the first study that’s really looked at how animals can use the internet together.”
After their initial assessment, researchers halted routine calls to see whether the parrots would choose to continue making them. They thought the parrots would revert to their lifestyles from before the experiment. Instead, the birds often rang their bells to see their friends.
“It was almost a race of who called first,” Cunha said.
The parrots learned from each other – some foraged and flew for the first time. After concluding their calls, some would immediately ring their bell again. The parrots completed 147 requested calls over about two months in the second phase, and researchers collected more than 1 000 hours of video interactions.
The study ended in September, and the results were published last week by the Association for Computing Machinery. Many parrots have continued to call each other, researchers said.
TINFOIL – it’s the only solution.
Buy shares and take the Covid lockdown toilet paper route and stock up because it’s got a huge future.
Take long strips of foil and wrap them around your head. This used to be considered the action of someone who may not have a firm grip on reality, but the couch science council stumbled across some startling news this week which points to a renewed necessity for this safeguard for general consumption.
The news possibly came from a passing car. Or one of the neighbours.
University of Texas, Austin, researchers Jerry Tang, a doctoral computer science student, and Alex Huth, an assistant professor of neuroscience and computer science, published in Nature Neuroscience the results of a study that will help people who are conscious but unable to verbalise, or those who have suffered a stroke, to communicate.
That’s a powerful tool to help those who need it.
But what terrified the wits out of me is that part of the study uses computer stuff similar to the systems that drive OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
It’s complicated if you’re not a brain box, but basically it’s a brain decoding system that translates images into text.
In layman’s terms, a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner (fMRI) reads brain activity and collaborates with hours of recorded vocals. It can then translate images or snatches of thought in the brain and spit out a text version.
Apparently it’s not yet totally accurate and – I found this alarming – can be open to “interpretation”.
AI has exploded. No one really knows yet where it is going, how far it will go and the extent to which it will affect our daily lives.
My imagination ran wild when I read the results of the Texan study, for which subjects needed no implants. At the moment, people need to have their heads read by fMRI for this to work. But what if …?
Imagine, in a world of the
AI of Things, you’re sitting in a meeting during which you have to find some delicate, diplomatic way of telling someone they’re an asshat and their plan spells doom all round.
My boss is one of the best, so there is no shadowy reference here. But what if your “superior” is really not and you mentally explore medieval means of torture while you smile and nod (to ignore later) the drivel being delivered to you.
Or, conversely, you stumble and say something truly embarrassing and “hear” all the kinds of idiot your audience is calling you. The self-flagellation of humiliation is bad enough without knowing the colourful glee of those celebrating your disgrace.
Even worse, what if AI learns to tap into whatever wi-fi is called in the near future, sort of 7G or something.
Will that mean the person who wi-fi-phoned you and you really really don’t want to talk to will be able to “hear” you rolling your eyes and “saying” rude things?
Will your neighbour’s wi-fi be able to transfer the terrible names you call him or her when they start up with the leaf blower/ power tool at 7 on a Sunday morning?
The possibilities, just like AI, are endless and privacy could become a quaint prehistoric notion.
Pardon, what did you say? You’re breaking up in my tinfoil wrapping.