The research published in the latest issue of American Science magazine shows that bees can understand complex and abstract mathematical concepts despite their small brains, which provides a new idea for developing more concise artificial intelligence algorithms. ?
Adrian Dell, the correspondent of the paper and an associate professor at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, said that "zero" is an important cornerstone in mathematics. It is not an easy mathematical concept to master, and it takes children some time to understand it. ?
To test bees' understanding of "zero", the researchers first used white squares with different numbers of black spots (1 to 5) to train bees to choose smaller numbers between two given squares, such as 3 and 4. If bees choose 3, they will be rewarded with sugar water. ?
Then, the researchers asked the bees to choose between a pure white square without black spots and a square with 1 or two black spots. The bees would fly to the pure white square, even though they had never seen a pure white square before. ?
The researchers pointed out that the bee brain has less than 65.438+0 million neurons, while human beings have 86 billion neurons. This shows that understanding numbers does not require a large brain capacity. ?
Dell said that one of the problems in the development of artificial intelligence is to let robots understand complex environments, such as judging whether there are passing vehicles when crossing the road like humans. Since bees can understand "zero" with less than 1 10,000 neurons, there may be simpler and more effective ways to promote the development of artificial intelligence in related fields. ?
Source: Phoenix Net