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Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

digitaltrends.com

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Re: Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

#11

Post by pasbesoin »

lars wrote: post #7

From a machine learning perspective this doesn't seem like such a daunting task. We have pretty good speech recognition for human language (plus acceptable speech synthesis). Assuming dolphins have a smaller vocabulary than humans, speech recognition of dolphins should strictly speaking be a simpler problem (although it would be significantly harder to record the training data).

I think part of the problem may be context. Without swimming around with them, and having similar senses (something that these days some wearable sensors might mitigate), it may be difficult to grasp what they are talking about.

Re: Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

#12

Post by pasbesoin »

Did anyone see the recently circulating video of the cat on the dock interacting with dolphins. Including repeated and extended nuzzling and no signs of aggression.

I immediate thought that, in part, the dolphins might be attracted by, intrigued by the cat's probably purring, sensing it through their jaws. But there seems to be a patience and curiosity there that speaks to significantly more than mere "animal instinct".

We already communicate with dolphins, and experiments have shown that they can understand the syntax and semantics of request/command structures (the same communication elements in different orders ('sentence structures', so to speak) have different meanings).

What will they say when we finally understand them? "Took you long enough."

Re: Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

#14

Post by loboman »

pasbesoin wrote: post #12

Did anyone see the recently circulating video of the cat on the dock interacting with dolphins. Including repeated and extended nuzzling and no signs of aggression. I immediate thought that, in part, the dolphins might be attracted by, intrigued by the cat's probably purring, sensing it through their jaws. But there seems to be a patience and curiosity there that speaks to significantly more than mere "animal instinc…

Thanks for all the fish

Re: Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

#15

Post by ghotli »

parfe wrote: post #8
AshleysBrain wrote: post #4

Do dolphins have anything interesting to say?

Obviously, "So long and thanks for all the fish." But more importantly communication is the first step towards mutual respect if dolphins are sentient.

A part of me feels like conscious, sentient beings should have equal protection under the law. Just because they don't encode knowledge in written language or make tools like we do doesn't mean that they may be any less sentient.

Re: Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

#16

Post by dochtman »

ghotli wrote: post #15
parfe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously, "So long and thanks for all the fish." But more importantly communication is the first step towards mutual respect if dolphins are sentient.

A part of me feels like conscious, sentient beings should have equal protection under the law. Just because they don't encode knowledge in written language or make tools like we do doesn't mean that they may be any less sentient.

Define conscious, sentient.

Re: Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

#18

Post by michael_dorfman »

dochtman wrote: post #16
ghotli wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A part of me feels like conscious, sentient beings should have equal protection under the law. Just because they don't encode knowledge in written language or make tools like we do doesn't mean that they may be any less sentient.

Define conscious, sentient.

You can start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience

Re: Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

#19

Post by bh42222 »

pasbesoin wrote: post #12

Did anyone see the recently circulating video of the cat on the dock interacting with dolphins. Including repeated and extended nuzzling and no signs of aggression. I immediate thought that, in part, the dolphins might be attracted by, intrigued by the cat's probably purring, sensing it through their jaws. But there seems to be a patience and curiosity there that speaks to significantly more than mere "animal instinc…

What will they say when we finally understand them? "Took you long enough."

I don't believe that communication between dolphins and trainers has been strictly one way. I'm pretty sure a trainer can easily read a lot from a dolphin's actions, sounds, etc.

And keep in mind, the other great apes are wicked smart, like smarter then small human children smart, way smarter then the smartest dog, but still not smart enough to say something like "Took you long enough to teach us sign language."

Re: Translation technology may let humans speak with dolphins

#20

Post by pavel_lishin »

lars wrote: post #7

From a machine learning perspective this doesn't seem like such a daunting task. We have pretty good speech recognition for human language (plus acceptable speech synthesis). Assuming dolphins have a smaller vocabulary than humans, speech recognition of dolphins should strictly speaking be a simpler problem (although it would be significantly harder to record the training data).

Sure, but we start off already being fluent in the human language we're trying to write software for.
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