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If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

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Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#61

Post by ggm »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #16
ggm wrote: post #5

Infrasound aside, it seems that it's neural after all. Apes scream and grunt, so vocalisation follows gross mood. (I don't know if anyone has tested apes for ultra low frequency communications)

I don't follow why screams and grunts can only encode gross mood. Presuming I can differentiate them enough to have some amount of vocabulary, why can't I make a well reasoned and abstract grunt?

You can, and arguably Apes do. I do not reject the possibility the range of grunts encode information beyond "stop behaving like the 9 month old ape you are before I rage quit and beat my chest"

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#62

Post by chatmasta »

Archelaos wrote: post #31
traject_ wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason to believe that LLMs are necessarily similar to humans. Just think of flight; both birds and planes can fly despite being very different. It's understandable that because humans are our main reference for intelligence that we see LLMs speaking language as a proof of similarity but there's no concrete reason to assume that.

Here is a cognitive experiment were chimpanzees perform better than humans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKvX9PPmI-Q

There's something about watching other primates interact with screens that just feels so uncanny. It's an almost humbling experience, seeing how much they look like us tapping and scrolling. The only difference seems to be that we think we understand more of what we're looking at on the screen... but do we really?

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#63

Post by elpocko »

withinboredom wrote: post #19
cactusplant7374 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not language. It's basically mimicking humans. Noam Chomsky on Nim Chimpsky and the Emergence of Language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a39vcatTCVU Chomsky has a few other interviews where he addresses this.

You don’t need a language to communicate (ask my cat — or any cat/dog). You also don’t need words, but colloquially, “talking” means using words, not using language. Someone talking to you with random noises you can reproduce would still be called “talking” whether or not it was a language. In other words a baby saying “milk” because it wants milk doesn’t mean you should ignore it because it isn’t using a “language.”

> (ask my cat

Ok. Hi cat. Do you need language to communicate? Plz respond.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#65

Post by GauntletWizard »

haliskerbas wrote: post #57
xoac wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we just put some AI via electrodes into the monkeys. If we can also add some blockchain, I think we'll have a winner. Let's circle back Monday on this idea, I'd like to pick your brain some more.

You're mocking the parent but isn't this what most BCIs do? Electrodes + signal processing to estimate some output.

Yes, but Brain-Computer Interfaces are not currently an especially advanced field of study. We don't have the precision needed to do any of that as currently stands.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#66

Post by chatmasta »

catchnear4321 wrote: post #34
rmellow wrote: post #29

> There was also a communications problem. Though they had an equivalent IQ of sixty, and could understand several hundred words of English, they were unable to talk. It had proved impossible to give useful vocal chords either to apes or monkeys, and they therefore had to express themselves in sign language - Rendezvous with Rama (1973) Guess it's more fiction than science fiction now.

It would be impossible to give them useful vocal cords. Just not because of the vocal cords. There should be a category specifically for invalidated science fiction. Things found to be unpossible in any timeline, assuming consistent laws of nature.

I believe this category is referred to as "uplifting" [0]. And while it certainly hasn't been proved to be viable so far, are you really sure it's time to rule it out as a possibility?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_(science_fiction)

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#67

Post by holoduke »

chatmasta wrote: post #49
nico wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I've also been wondering this. Can we train an LLM on dolphin noises? I suspect the problem is the training data. If we don't know what the dolphin squeaks mean, we can't really filter the training data to include only meaningful "language." But I do wonder how far we could get by just dumping a bunch of dolphin recordings into an LLM and getting it to make the same noises... The other side of that same problem is th…

You can use it to identify patterns and other interesting aspects. First steps in understanding a language without any reference.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#68

Post by jancsika »

xoac wrote: post #54
nico wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was just riffing on the comment that was replying to. So is the control issue in the larynx or in the brain? And if it was the brain, could some sort of AI system do brain larynx communication for the monkeys? (Via electrodes maybe?)

Yes, we just put some AI via electrodes into the monkeys. If we can also add some blockchain, I think we'll have a winner. Let's circle back Monday on this idea, I'd like to pick your brain some more.

I think you meant, "pick nico's LLM."

In any case, you bring up an important issue: can monkeys bitcoin?

Could we backport a blockchain experiment in the same way that demoscene Hungarians have backported math hacks to fuel unexpectedly sophisticated realtime graphics to the C64?

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#69

Post by Retric »

haliskerbas wrote: post #57
xoac wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we just put some AI via electrodes into the monkeys. If we can also add some blockchain, I think we'll have a winner. Let's circle back Monday on this idea, I'd like to pick your brain some more.

You're mocking the parent but isn't this what most BCIs do? Electrodes + signal processing to estimate some output.

Not really, BCIs are still more about teaching the user to make a recognizable signal vs interpreting something that already exists.

Re: If parrots can talk, why can’t monkeys?

#70

Post by gweinberg »

PKop wrote: post #41
pcrh wrote: post #20

It's interesting to compare this "sound-talk" that parrots can easily accomplish with the obviously greater intelligence of apes, who can't reproduce human sounds, with the debate over whether chatGPT is intelligent or not. Note that Koko was obviously a greater communicator than any parrot ever was. Is mimicking human behaviour a necessary, or even sufficient, criteria for demonstrating cognition and intelligence?

I'm not sure how obvious it is; that story seems just as likely to have been fraudulent as true.

I think Koko's trainer really did believe her more extravagant claims. So did Clever Hans's. But there was a lot of wishful thinking along the lines of "Koko's making a weird gorilla joke that doesn't make sense to human minds" when a more likely explanation would be "Koko really doesn't know what she is saying".
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