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It is less like an alphabet, we already know that there is a discreet number of click clusters (basically an alphabet). Here they have found that the sperm whal
by baerrie 2y ago
It is less like an alphabet, we already know that there is a discreet number of click clusters (basically an alphabet). Here they have found that the sperm whales modulate tempo of these clusters, rhythm within the clusters, add additional ornamental clicks, and change the rhythm of individual clicks within clusters over time (rubato). This adds an insane order of magnitude to their language much like our use of tone, context, and all the other ways we take our alphabet and enrich it with exponentially more meaning. This is the first time this has been proven in an evolutionary lineage separate from ours!
- scotty79 2y agoMaybe it's more like phoneme set.
- mseepgood 2y ago> This adds an insane order of magnitude to their language Do we assume they only have one language? We humans have thousands of languages.
- throwup238 2y agoWhat are the chances of us being able to decode some of that in our life time? There must be some meaning to it, even if it's not as complex as human speech. We should do it just to make sure they're not saying "so long and thanks for all the plankton."
- emmelaich 2y agoCould be just like that classic Gary Larson canine decoder cartoon.[0] Could be more musical. I hope / fear it's something more sophisticated. [0] https://twitter.com/Andr6wMale/status/1501487704399298560/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Andr6wMale/status/1501487704399298560/ph...
- yosito 2y ago> even if it's not as complex as human speech I wouldn't make that assumption. Just because whales don't have opposable thumbs and have a harder time making and using tools doesn't mean that their speech isn't advanced.
- baerrie 2y agoExtremely likely, especially with the increasing abilities of LLM to decode unknown languages. Then the test would be for us to produce these sounds and see if the whales respond as expected.
- fnordpiglet 2y agoYou would need some way to convert the whale LLM to human language though. Otherwise you would just be making pre trained GPT4 for whales. One option would be to label data according to induced reactions in whales to whale language completions (i.e., let the LLM complete whale language and use the reactions to try to induce some understanding. But it feels unlikely we would get further than providing a chatgpt for whales that only they can understand.
- famouswaffles 2y agoYou wouldn't necessarily need that. You don't actually need translated text for every single language pair a LLM will learn to translate. ie train a LLM on English, French, Spanish data. This data only contains parallel text in English-French. Can this LLM still translate to and from Spanish ? Yeah.
- fnordpiglet 2y agoYou still have a bridge and each of those languages are not just from the same species but the same language family. If there’s English to French and French to Spanish there’s a semantic relationship between English and Spanish. There exists no bridge to whale any more than there is aliens from Alpha Centauri.
- famouswaffles 2y agoCommon concepts are common, what species the language is in is not as relevant as you think. Text and Image space, two entirely different modalities are so related in high dimensional space, you can translate between them with just a simple linear projection layer.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y agoThere's an enormous gap between being able to "decode" it and actually understanding what it means. Wittgenstein's quote on lions is still relevant.
- currymj 2y agoa big part of the project is to not just collect whalesong data but also measure what activities the whales physically engage in as they “speak”.
- marci 2y agoTemba, his arms open. Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
- canjobear 2y agoWittgenstein didn't present any evidence.
- gessha 2y agoReminds me of the Chinese room [1] argument: Does a computer really understand Chinese language if it can respond to Chinese inputs with Chinese outputs? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
- kubanczyk 2y agoIsn't a large company more handy model than a "Chinese room"? Hordes of these in practice own our species. They come up with the decisions on carbon footprint, on whether to colonize Mars, on where to shift collective attention. Although these entities are only one of achievements of our culture, for now they dominate on global level. Big achievement. "Consciousness" not strictly needed. Whatever the definition of "consciousness", a big company is driven by a glorified stack of excels and definitely couldn't write Chinese (assuming none of employees does, after Searle). So, running a planet and overriding any individual human is not enough, let's focus on entertaining an individual human with an interesting conversation in Chinese? What do you even seek with that model? /s
- 2y ago
- canjobear 2y agoThe topic paper is part of a big project called Project Ceti that's aiming to do just that. On the theoretical side for why it may be possible, see https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.11081 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.11081 https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10931 https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10931
- xattt 2y agoI am now anticipating some form of an existential crisis around whether animals that can talk via a specific language are any less entitled to rights than other humans.
- atrus 2y agoWe barely give certain humans rights, we'll have no issue ignoring the rights of animals
- dogcomplex 2y agoDon't worry, we've had a pretty pisspoor track record with fellow humans too. There's always room to turn it around
- hnbad 2y agoIt's always surprising to me when people seem to be unaware that things like human rights or international laws only exist as long as every authority (i.e. everyone with the power to enforce it with violence if necessary) agrees with them. The US literally passed a law allowing itself to invade The Hague if necessary to free any US service member brought before the International Court of Justice. Even the signatories of the UN human rights conventions could simply refuse to cooperate and experience no meaningful consequences. International laws are just treaties and treaties can be cancelled or revoked. Human rights are no more reliable than company mission statements. Not to mention that even on a national level laws only exist as limitations the state imposes on itself (or to chisel away at limitations it imposed on itself before). This is why it took the civil rights protests and literal terrorism to arrive at universal suffrage and civil rights for women and Black people. Of course this only works if the government would rather change its laws than escalate protests to a civil war and which one your government chooses might surprise you.
- sam0x17 2y agoSo more sophisticated than a mere alphabet, if anything
- baerrie 2y agoExactly
- gopher_space 2y agoThe people hand-rolling their own hydrophones think there might be a lot going on we simply haven’t been able to hear yet.