Technology Imitates... LIFE!

Let’s not get into the old discussion whether life imitates art or otherwise... It’s too much like discussing which came first, the egg or the chicken... But the more we find out that technology itself has been a constant recreation of certain aspects of life, the more we get amazed by the length scientists are willing to go to push it beyond the limits! Moreover, their endless creativity towards either the object of their observation and its ends are – to say the least – unthinkable...

Now, take a minute or so to think what honeybees have to do with artificial intelligence or advanced graphic computer programs... Nothing, right? W-r-o-n-g! According to one of the leading bee experts from Australia – Dr. Adrian Dyer – his latest research shows that this particular insect can learn to recognize human faces even when seen from different viewpoints.

The scientist from Monash University explains that, regardless of their minuscule brains (sized 0.01% of our own), the honeybees showed great ability to recognize human faces from new viewpoints, once they had learned that particular face from two different angles. According to Dr. Dyer his research may be of interest for computer and imaging technology programmers who are looking to solve complex image tasks using minimal hardware. The same “simple” mechanism of image interpolation developed by the bees can also be used to improve the way current artificial intelligence recognition systems perform.

I could finish this news here. But I decided not to leave any unanswered question hanging over our heads. And I know you are most probably asking “OK, that’s interesting. But how on earth did they find this out?” Believe me, I asked the very same question when I first read the article... So I researched a little further.

The work was conducted as follows: researchers individually trained different groups of free flying bees with a sugar reward for making correct choices, or alternatively the bees were punished with a bitter tasting solution for incorrect choices. Faces were presented on a vertical screen and bees slowly learnt to fly to the correct target faces. Over the course of a day a bee brain learned a complex task, and then when tested in non-rewarded tests (to totally exclude cues like smell) only bees that had experienced multiple views (e.g. faces at both 0° and 60°) were able to solve a novel rotational angle of 30°. Artful, huh?