Can animals make art? Art for art's sake!

Depends probably very much on how one defines art. Or art/beauty is in the eye of the (human) beholder.

"... Of course, figuring out whether something is a work of art requires answering some tricky philosophical questions. Are animals even capable of creating art? And how can we tell whether something is a work of art rather than just a coincidentally beautiful object? As a philosopher and artist who’s interested in aesthetics and biology, I recently wrote about the evolution of behaviors in animals that could be seen as art. ...

There’s a general agreement that art must have some sort of producer and some possible or intended audience. In this way, it’s similar to other forms of communication. ..."

Can animals make art?

A male satin bowerbird stands before his creation. Ken Griffiths/iStock via Getty Images

Source

Pablo Pigasso?

Can ChatGPT help researchers understand how the human brain handles language? | PNAS. Really!

I believe the question is possibly too narrow, and short-sighted! Reeks of anthropomorphism!

It appears the author Mitchell Waldrop is a free lance journalist and PhD physicist, not a scientist as you would expect from PNAS.

Machine learning & AI are an avenue to finding new forms of intelligence beyond what evolved over billions of years through natural evolution. It is possibly a quantum leap!

Can ChatGPT help researchers understand how the human brain handles language? | PNAS Large language models are surprisingly good at mimicking our speech and writing. Now they’re serving as an electronic lab rat for language, offering insights into the mysteries of one of humankind’s most important abilities.

Robotics: Is the lemon ready for juicing?

Soon your robot can tell via touch! Unfortunately, this research seems to be too anthropomorphic!

"... Now, the authors of a new Science study have successfully replicated skin’s complex, three-dimensional architecture. Their invention, nicknamed 3DAE-Skin, consists of three thin, flexible layers embedded with electronic circuits and sensors that mimic the distribution of Merkel cells and Ruffini endings. These sensors detect various types of stress and strain and convert them to electrical signals, which, when guided by artificial intelligence, can reveal an object’s shape and texture—including whether it is soft or hard. ..."

From the editor's summary and abstract:

"Editor’s summary

Merkel cells and Ruffini endings, which reside at the bottom of the epidermis and within the dermis of human skin, respectively, can perceive external forces and the strain of the skin. Liu et al. designed, fabricateed, and used artificial intelligence–guided signal processing to develop an electronic skin that mimics human mechanosensation. The three-dimensional configuration of pressure and strain sensors and a heterogeneous encapsulation strategy enabled the differentiation of normal or shear forces and induced strain. The authors demonstrated the application of this electronic skin by measuring the freshness of foods such as fruits, cake, and bread through touch-sensitive detection of changes in modulus.  ...

Abstract

Human skin sensing of mechanical stimuli originates from transduction of mechanoreceptors that converts external forces into electrical signals. Although imitating the spatial distribution of those mechanoreceptors can enable developments of electronic skins capable of decoupled sensing of normal/shear forces and strains, it remains elusive. We report a three-dimensionally (3D) architected electronic skin (denoted as 3DAE-Skin) with force and strain sensing components arranged in a 3D layout that mimics that of Merkel cells and Ruffini endings in human skin. This 3DAE-Skin shows excellent decoupled sensing performances of normal force, shear force, and strain and enables development of a tactile system for simultaneous modulus/curvature measurements of an object through touch. Demonstrations include rapid modulus measurements of fruits, bread, and cake with various shapes and degrees of freshness."

ScienceAdvisor

Zoom-in the natural human skin, and sketch it with intelligent three-dimensional electronics (original news release) An innovative three-dimensional architected electronic skin that mimics human mechanosensation.

A three-dimensionally architected electronic skin mimicking human mechanosensation (no public access)

(A) Bio-inspired design of the 3D architected electronic skin (3DAE-skin). (B) 3DAE-skin attached to the finger tip of a robot hand. (C-G) Optical and microscope images of the 3DAE-skin.

Divorce is more common in monogamist albatross couples with shy males, study finds. Really!

Shy males and divorce make for catchy headlines. The study title uses actually "boldness" not shyness! 

However, there are some doubts about this research despite observational data ranging several decades. There is a good chance that the albatross researchers were tainted by anthropomorphic thinking.

These "divorces" appear to be forced by stronger males! Plus, the studied small population has a surplus of males.

"... But on rare occasions, an albatross pair will “divorce” — a term ornithologists use for instances when one partner leaves the pair for another mate while the other partner remains in the flock. Divorce rates vary widely across the avian world, and the divorce rate for wandering albatrosses is relatively low. ...
The researchers say their study is the first to link personality and divorce in a wild animal species. ...
“Instead we find the shy divorce more because they are more likely to be forced to divorce by a more competitive intruder. ...
The new study concentrates on a population of wandering albatross that return regularly to Possession Island in the Southern Indian Ocean to breed. This population has been the focus of a long-term study dating back to the 1950s ...
This particular population is skewed toward more male individuals than females ... Those individuals that divorced were more likely to do so again and again. ...
“We know that personality predicts divorce in human beings, and it would be intuitive to make the link between personality and divorce in wild populations.”"

From the abstract:

"Personality predicts divorce rates in humans, yet how personality traits affect divorce in wild animals remains largely unknown. In a male-skewed population of wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans), we showed that personality predicts divorce; shyer males exhibited higher divorce rates than bolder males but no such relationship was found in females. We propose that divorce may be caused by the intrusion of male competitors and shyer males divorce more often because of their avoidance of territorial aggression, while females have easier access to mates regardless of their personality. Thus, personality may have important implications for the dynamics of social relationships."

Divorce is more common in albatross couples with shy males, study finds | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology In a long-studied population of wandering albatrosses, females are less likely to stick with a shy mate.

Boldness predicts divorce rates in wandering albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) (open access)

Artificial intelligence: Anthropomorphic or artificial and transcending?

There is a strong tendency to use human intelligence to compare it to artificial intelligence. Moreover, AI often is supposed to mimic human intelligence.

I think, this is rather short sighted. I bet in 10-30 or so artificial intelligence will have surpassed current human intelligence. 

It would be a tragic fallacy and a self inflicted handicap to limit ourselves to our current human intelligence! The wonders of intelligence lie ahead to be discovered wherever they may take us (responsibly)!

Sapere aude! (Dare to know!)

Humans In The Image Of God

Posted: 8/13/2014

In Latin image Imago Dei a theological doctrine in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (see e.g. Book of Genesis 1-11). This is anthropogenic wishful thinking! God is love! God is beyond human comprehension for the foreseeable future!