[anfractuosity]

Also http://www.thecrowbox.com/ were they apparently trained captive crows to pickup coins in return for food, there's also a TED talk the guy behind it gave.

I've briefly looked at the 'Crowded Cities' page, I'm still not sure how the crows realise they get food though for cigarette butts? Does it rely on them randomly dropping something in the pot, and then getting food and continuing to do it?

[MikeTheGreat]

I was wondering that too. My brief reading of the web page didn't reveal anything, but I might have missed it.

I wonder if humans could bootstrap the process by modeling the behaviour? Crows are supposed to be mega-smart, so maybe they'd pick up on that and emulate us.

Maybe you could start by having a bin of 'butts next to the Crowbar so they can get some early, quick reinforcement, then when they run out they'll move on to harder challenges.

Is there someone here who's done enough video game design that they could comment on how lessons learned from training / reinforcing players in games could be leveraged here?

[frostwhale]

I think this is where the part "tells other crows about it" line might come in. Perhaps they're hoping it works that way and they just train a few crows? This does seeem like a pretty important training point though.

[jldugger]

Didn't it turn out that guy faked his results?

[vanattab]

I don't think I would go so far as to say he faked his data. But he did intentional misrepresent his work to the press and during the TED talk to boost his own status/ego.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/corvidresearch.blog/2015/03/12/...