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Attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with AI, then talk back

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Re: Attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with AI, then talk back

#111

Post by cetalingua »

01100011 wrote: post #101
Misdicorl wrote: post #32

God I cannot wait to talk to whales. Their oral histories must be incredible. People have fantasized about communicating with extraterrestrials for ages. I don't understand why we haven't invested significant resources in trying to communicate with the other animals on our own planet. What an incredibly weird and non translatable experience it will be to (finally?!) start this adventure with whales. Tangent time. If…

Do we even know that whales communicate with conscious intent? What if the sounds they make were mere reflexes driven by some internal state like adrenaline, sex or hunger hormones?

We do, actually, for dolphins at least. Researchers did an experiment where dolphins had to coordinate their actions (push 2 buttons together) without seeing each other. So they coordinated their actions acoustically by communicating when they should push the buttons.

Re: Attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with AI, then talk back

#113

Post by easygenes »

secondaryacct wrote: post #110
tsol wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean.. hate to be a party pooper, but just because we created a the equivalent of gpt3 for whales, does that mean we can do anything useful? Like talking to whales.. we haven't even established how their language works. What language even is, is a good question. I read it once demonstrated as this; some species of monkey has a specific call they do when they see a panther, and it results in all the monkeys who hear…

Recording the feats of the emperor is already miles beyond what whales probably do and I d go as far as to call that recorded History,since the goal of writing is to allow the dead to speak to the future, a megalomaniac endeavour only overly inflated brains could think about. After seeing that poor monkey spending his life learning sign language just to ask for more bananas and never asking a tough question, Im a bit…

Alex the African Grey parrot is I think the most developed example we have of animals learning human language and concepts. Alex is notable for being the first non-human to ask an existential question, asking, "What color?" when seeing himself in the mirror. He quickly learned he was grey.

Re: Attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with AI, then talk back

#114

Post by HamburgerEmoji »

01100011 wrote: post #101
Misdicorl wrote: post #32

God I cannot wait to talk to whales. Their oral histories must be incredible. People have fantasized about communicating with extraterrestrials for ages. I don't understand why we haven't invested significant resources in trying to communicate with the other animals on our own planet. What an incredibly weird and non translatable experience it will be to (finally?!) start this adventure with whales. Tangent time. If…

Do we even know that whales communicate with conscious intent? What if the sounds they make were mere reflexes driven by some internal state like adrenaline, sex or hunger hormones?

Are you sure you communicate with conscious intent? I don't want to make assumptions about you, but I bet your vocal cords have always been controlled via electrical signals from your brain, which in turn is just doing stuff according to physics.

Re: Attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with AI, then talk back

#115

Post by ethbr0 »

oblak wrote: post #28
mc32 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. This happens pretty frequently. Hunting species to extinction, cutting down trees for fuel, etc.

Well, I didn't say we have a shortage of psychos, did I? Hunting the white rhinos to extinction is totally fine. It's just game theory, you guys.

Nobody said "fine". They said it happens, and that it follows from incentives.

Re: Attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with AI, then talk back

#116

Post by kevinmchugh »

Misdicorl wrote: post #32

God I cannot wait to talk to whales. Their oral histories must be incredible. People have fantasized about communicating with extraterrestrials for ages. I don't understand why we haven't invested significant resources in trying to communicate with the other animals on our own planet. What an incredibly weird and non translatable experience it will be to (finally?!) start this adventure with whales. Tangent time. If…

We've invested quite a lot in trying to communicate with other ape species. There's very little to show for it. Koko the signing gorilla is the biggest success and 1) that was conducted hugely unethically 2) had a closely-involved researcher/caretaker/interpreter. Without the lead researcher communication was very limited.

Re: Attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with AI, then talk back

#117

Post by thaumasiotes »

Misdicorl wrote: post #98
thaumasiotes wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want the equivalent of the LHC for cross species communication. This is not a valid concept. What would the "equivalent of the LHC for communication between ordinary Americans and the Twitter API" look like? What uses would it have? There's nothing out there that can receive arbitrary messages. Communication -- of any kind, with anything -- is limited to messages that the other party is capable of receiving.

I'm not sure I understand your complaint or why you've caught the Twitter API into it? I imagine a center for cross species communication research would coordinate scientists across a couple important fields also interested in the question and allocate their resources to the research which seems most promising to make progress. Just like any other institute. I imagine the fields would be biology zoology linguistics c…

> I'm not sure I understand your complaint or why you've caught the Twitter API into it?

Because I want you to tell me what you think communication between a human and the Twitter API would look like. I have taken the position that you've produced a bunch of words without bothering to think about what those words are supposed to mean, with the result that in fact they have no meaning and you're attempting to refer to a concept that cannot actually exist.

A general theory of cross-species communication is significantly more of an ill-defined problem than a specific theory of human-Twitter API communication, but it must include the human-Twitter API case, so it's a useful example to think about.

> I imagine a center for cross species communication research would coordinate scientists across a couple important fields also interested in the question and allocate their resources to the research which seems most promising to make progress. Just like any other institute.

Ah, just like any other institute.

Certainly you can have people dress up as scientists and act like they're scientists -- just like any other institute! -- but this is only a good idea if you think they can accomplish something by doing it. What you're describing is a pure cargo cult. Their only goal is to appear to be similar to other, more useful people.

We already have many experts in cross-species communication. We call them animal trainers.

Re: Attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with AI, then talk back

#118

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #88
Misdicorl wrote: post #32

God I cannot wait to talk to whales. Their oral histories must be incredible. People have fantasized about communicating with extraterrestrials for ages. I don't understand why we haven't invested significant resources in trying to communicate with the other animals on our own planet. What an incredibly weird and non translatable experience it will be to (finally?!) start this adventure with whales. Tangent time. If…

> Whales have the capability to far outstrip humans in intelligence (if you accept that neuron count and neuron connections are the raw inputs). Understood normally, the raw input also includes the software installed in the whale's brain. This limits the potential capability of whales. If you were to overwrite that with software of your own design, you'd have a robot in the body of a whale, but not an actual whale.

There's no software in a whale's brain, or in a human's brain.

As has been discussed in a couple of articles linked on HN recently, it might not even be useful to think about brain function as computation.

Re: Attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with AI, then talk back

#119

Post by Misdicorl »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #116
Misdicorl wrote: post #32

God I cannot wait to talk to whales. Their oral histories must be incredible. People have fantasized about communicating with extraterrestrials for ages. I don't understand why we haven't invested significant resources in trying to communicate with the other animals on our own planet. What an incredibly weird and non translatable experience it will be to (finally?!) start this adventure with whales. Tangent time. If…

We've invested quite a lot in trying to communicate with other ape species. There's very little to show for it. Koko the signing gorilla is the biggest success and 1) that was conducted hugely unethically 2) had a closely-involved researcher/caretaker/interpreter. Without the lead researcher communication was very limited.

I think the actual investment is shockingly little. Even compared to a moderately sized zoo the investment is tiny. It's like a dozen individual people trying over the past five decades.

Re: Attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with AI, then talk back

#120

Post by thaumasiotes »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #118
thaumasiotes wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whales have the capability to far outstrip humans in intelligence (if you accept that neuron count and neuron connections are the raw inputs). Understood normally, the raw input also includes the software installed in the whale's brain. This limits the potential capability of whales. If you were to overwrite that with software of your own design, you'd have a robot in the body of a whale, but not an actual whale.

There's no software in a whale's brain, or in a human's brain. As has been discussed in a couple of articles linked on HN recently, it might not even be useful to think about brain function as computation.

> There's no software in a whale's brain, or in a human's brain.

Sure, and man is the only animal with no instincts, ensouled cells are metaphysically different from soulless cells, and fossils were placed in the ground as a test of your faith.

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