Learn about whether you should fear AI; the science of a good selfie; and how bats map the world by time, not distance. Additional resources from Michael Wooldridge: Pick up "A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going" at your local bookstore: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250770745 Twitter: https://twitter.com/wooldridgemike Oxford faculty page: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/michael.wooldridge/ Selfies Really Do Make Your Nose Look Big originally aired April 24, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/hubble-telescope-history-selfie-science-and-exerci Bats map the world by time, not distance by Briana Brownell A surprising discovery: Bats know the speed of sound from birth. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-05/tu-asd050521.php Amichai, E., & Yovel, Y. (2021). Echolocating bats rely on an innate speed-of-sound reference. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(19), e2024352118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2024352118 How do bats echolocate and how are they adapted to this activity? (1998, December 21). Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-bats-echolocate-an/ Thaler, L. (2015). Using Sound to Get Around. APS Observer, 28(10). https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/using-sound-to-get-around Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free!
Learn about whether you should fear AI; the science of a good selfie; and how bats map the world by time, not distance.
Additional resources from Michael Wooldridge:
Selfies Really Do Make Your Nose Look Big originally aired April 24, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/hubble-telescope-history-selfie-science-and-exerci
Bats map the world by time, not distance by Briana Brownell
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free!
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/bats-map-the-world-by-time-not-distance
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, artificial intelligence researcher Michael Wooldridge is back to tell you whether you should be afraid of AI. You’ll also learn the science of a good selfie; and how bats map the world not by distance, but by time.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Yesterday, Michael Wooldridge told us about why AI isn't as advanced as movies would have you believe — and why that may not be a bad thing. Still, it's a popular belief that if we make AI too advanced, it'll turn on humanity and create a robot apocalypse. Today, Michael is going to tell us why that isn't too likely. Michael Wooldridge is a professor and head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford who's been at the heart of AI community for 25 years. He's also the author of the new book "A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going." And we asked him: is AI something we should fear?
[CLIP 2:42]
So yeah, there are some limitations of AI that are worth paying attention to. But they're not going to lead to the end of the world. Again, that was Michael Wooldridge, head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and author of the new book "A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going." You can find a link to pick it up in the show notes.
ASHLEY: Speaking of technology’s limitations… you’d think with all the camera technology out there, you’d be able to take a decent picture of yourself. And yet, sometimes a solid selfie feels as far away as flying cars. That’s why we remastered this clip from 2018 to help you be camera-ready.
[CODY: clip 1:24]
Most of us map the world by distance. But bats? It turns out that they map the world by time. And to do that, they need to know the speed of sound….even from birth. That’s according to a new experiment from Tel Aviv University.
The speed of sound is essential for bats because they use echolocation to understand the world around them. To echolocate, bats make a series of short chirps and listen to the way it bounces off objects in their environment to map their location.
To piece this information together, bats’ brains have evolved a special sort of sound measurement mechanism, called Delay-tuned neurons. These neurons activate when the echo returns a specific time afterwards. Their activation is precisely calibrated to — you guessed it — the speed of sound.
Scientists wanted to find out if this neural knowledge is innate or adaptable. Senses that are innate can be used immediately from birth — they’re hardwired right into the animal’s brain. That can be great for survival, say if you’re a baby bat that has to quickly escape a hungry cat.
But innate senses are usually not adaptable. If an animal’s environment changes, they’ll have trouble adjusting.
To figure this out, scientists listened in on the bats’ echolocation calls. See, bats speed up the sounds they make as they get closer to a target object so they can pinpoint their landing. This gives scientists a way to figure out where the bat thinks it is in relation to the object it’s landing on.
To understand the bats’ brains at birth, the experimenters needed to raise bat babies. They raised one group in a regular environment and a second in air spiked with helium. Helium is much lighter than air, and so sound travels faster through it.
The experiment recorded the bats’ echolocation calls as they approached a feeding platform in their environment. As they got closer, the bats in the helium-rich environment quickened their calls earlier: evidence they thought it was closer than it was. Since they did this as soon as they could fly, scientists concluded that their knowledge of the speed of sound was innate.
The same thing happened when they switched the regular bats into the helium-rich environment. Neither group was able to adjust to a faster speed of sound. Even after they successfully landed on the platform, the bats continued to perceive it as being closer than it really was. They relied on their echolocation perception rather than their physical perception. This suggests that bats encode their world in terms of time instead of space!
Just remember that the next time a bat asks you for directions.
Let’s do a quick recap of what we learned today
[ad lib optional]
ASHLEY: The writer for today’s last story was Briana Brownell.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer who was also an audio editor on today’s episode
ASHLEY: Our producer and lead audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. But first? Let me take a selfie!
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!