The Magic Touch

Scientists are trying out “a portable testing station equipped with a touch screen and facial recognition software, [which] could help scientists study primate intelligence in the wild.” NYT (Gift Article): In This Costa Rican Forest, Monkeys Come Face-to-Face With AI. “One day last summer, a curious white-faced capuchin encountered a strange contraption in the forest. There, in the middle of the Taboga Forest Reserve in Costa Rica, sat a 15-inch touch screen, mounted in a wooden frame. As the monkey, an alpha male named Papi, began investigating — poking the device here, prodding it there — his fingers landed on the screen. Suddenly, a piece of dried banana dropped into a tray below the frame. Before long, Papi learned the basic rules of the device: touch the screen, get a dried banana slice.” (Papi, trust us, we know the feeling. Wait until you see how many dried banana slices you get when you use the screen to stir up outrage by spreading an over-simplified falsehood about another monkey.)