Costa Rica scientists placed an AI touchscreen in a wild forest; 16 capuchin monkeys used it for banana rewards

It is a known fact that humans have evolved from their ape ancestors. From crawling to walking we have come a long way and it seems that they are following suit, delving into the world of AI. In an experiment conducted in a Costa Rica forest reserve, capuchin monkeys learned to use an AI touchscreen to get banana rewards and even began kissing the screen.In the study published in The American Journal of Primatology, scientists created an AI system that uses facial recognition and real-time touchscreen testing to automate cognitive studies of capuchin monkeys in the wild. Dubbed CapuchinAI, it was developed by researchers at Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology. It provides a roadmap for the first scalable, systematic way to evaluate and monitor the cognitive abilities of wild primates."The primate brain didn't evolve in a lab, it evolved in complex, competitive environments," said Marcela Benítez, Emory assistant professor of anthropology and senior author of the paper. "Yet primate cognition is rarely studied in the wild because the experimental control needed to measure cognition is difficult in unpredictable environments."CapuchinAIThe system identifies an approa...