The ruling came about when Wikipedia concluded that a monkey's selfie could not be copyrighted by a nature photographer whose camera was swiped by an ape in the jungle and the animal's selfie went viral. United States copyright regulators agreed with Wikipedia. The US Copyright Office, in a 1,222-page report discussing federal copyright law, said that a photograph taken by a monkey is unprotected intellectual property.
Under UK law, however, the photographer could claim the intellectual property rights to the picture even if he didn't press the shutter if the image is part of his "intellectual creation." However, such a case has never been tried in court.
Seriously though, could you teach a monkey to play chess? According to a 2014 article in Scientific American titled Chimps Outplay Humans in Brain Games, in some ways chimps are smarter than humans.
As the article pointed out humans are geniuses, philosophers, artists, poets, etc. and we are amused by animal acts. And, of course, we also assume animals aren’t smart as us. But they asked the question, what is smart? Is it just about having ideas, or being good at language and math?
Scientists have shown that many animals have an extraordinary intellect. Chimps have a photographic memory and can memorize patterns they see in the blink of an eye. Sea lions and elephants can remember faces from decades ago. Animals also have a unique sense perception and sniffer dogs can detect the first signs of cancer.
In a study by psychologists Colin Camerer and Tetsuro Matsuzawa, chimps and humans played a strategy game and the chimps outplayed the humans. Nobody saw that coming! In the study, chimp pairs or human pairs contested in a two-player video game. Each player simply had to choose between left and right squares on a touch-screen panel, while being blind to their rival’s choice. Player A, for instance, won, each time their choices matched, and player B won, if their choices did not. The opponent’s choice was displayed after every selection, and payoffs in the form of apple cubes or money were dispensed to the winner.
The article stated: In competitive games such as this, like in chess or poker, the players learn to guess their opponent’s moves based on the latter’s past choices, and adjust their own strategy at every step in order to win. An ideal game, eventually, develops a certain pattern. Using a set of math equations, described by game theory, it is easy to predict this pattern on paper. When the players are each making the most strategic choices, the game hovers around what is called an ‘equilibrium’ state.
In the experiment the chimps played a near-ideal game, as their choices leaned closer to game theory equilibrium. When humans played, their choices drifted farther off from theoretical predictions. Chess endgames using combinational game theory. Does training in cognitively demanding activities make people smarter?
Since the game is a test of how much the players recall of their opponent’s choice history, and how cleverly they maneuver by following choice patterns, the results suggest that chimps may have a superior memory and strategy, which help them perform better in a competition, than humans.
It seems chimps have an exceptional working memory and in a 2007 experiment a 2-year old chimp memorized random numerical patterns within 200 milliseconds, about half the time it takes for the human eye to blink. Memory with such incredible precision is rare in human babies and near absent in adults.
Ayumu the chimpanzee has made headlines around the world for his ability to beat humans on memory tests, in both speed and accuracy. Does Ayumu's ability force us to reconsider our assumptions about human superiority to other primates? Chimp vs Human! | Memory Test | BBC Earth
No comments:
Post a Comment