To talk to other humans, we literally have a whole writing field, courses to teach how to open to write technical documentation or research grants and so much more.
There’s already a whole industry already on how to talk to the human language model and humans are currently way smarter.
Just assuming for a moment that this capability increases enough for an ape to say something that humans would find "profound", I wonder if humans would give more weight to what an Ape had to say than a fellow human.
If you believe that speech is a survival skill (which I would think most people believe) then anything that increases its prevalence or effectiveness would be evolutionarily selected for, right? We’re talking a 300-500+ Ky period, probably almost 2X that (depending upon the speech capabilities of our hominid ancestors), so plenty of time for evolutionary pressure to apply.
Let's say, all those where some individuals manage to adopt human speech, like various birds, some whales, chimps, etc, or manage to interact with human language symbols by means of sign language or similar. This is quite impressive. To my knowledge, we, while far better equipped, haven't intruded a single communication system of an other species in a way that we could meaningful interact or even use their intrinsic concepts. On a less complex scale, but still impressive are those, who manage to interpret some human practices, like pointing. (Mind that this requires some kind of mirroring to construct an assumed line of sight and some assumptions about what the other might have in mind and what might be an object of interest and engaging in some sort of dialog over this.)
I don't think that's at all likely. We've had fire and had the physiological adaptations enabling speech for well over a million years. We've been manufacturing complex tools such as spears with stone tips for about half a million years, to Homo heidelbergensis. Even Ergaster had lifespans allowing survival to an age where grandchildren could reach adulthood, allowing for skills transfer.
What if they used a click based or tone based language instead of words as we use them? These do not require advanced vocal faculties at all... We're being presumptuous here, as there have been documented instances for sapiens sapiens doing that.
> We don't tell people they can be bad at talking.
The brain evolved to communicate effectively with others. It did not evolve to manipulate symbols in a logical way. We can do it (some of us rather well) since the brain is still quite flexible. But it may account for the difference.
Evolution. Animals suddenly gain all sorts of competencies when the competitive pressure is on. Most animals already have linguistic ability, I don't think human language is all that special. We can do all sorts of fancy things with our brains that seem to defy explanation through the simple mechanics of evolution, but communicating the state of your brain to another of your species, that feels like basic stuff to me.
If dolphins had a human-like facility for language, I imagine some captive dolphins would have figured out (probably through a discussion among themselves) that humans also have language, and that it would be greatly beneficial if they could communicate with humans. With both parties sharing this goal, I don't think it would take long.
On the other hand, I don't suppose human language emerged fully-formed (I don't think there is much evidence for Chomsky's views on this), and these pre- or proto-language skills may provide a lot of insight into its evolution.
History shows that many humans of the same species can “interact” without friendly communication, or, for that matter, preserving fully functional languages (Just look at the Minoans, Etruscans, Harappans, Rhetics, and the numerous other peoples who spoke something that we can’t read, or can understand but only with great effort)
> For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
We can see with our own minds and that of animals that there is something greater that emerges with the additional size and complexity of the mind that wasn't there in simpler approaches.
Is not not unreasonable to consider that between Eliza and GPT-4 that something greater has emerged that is able to maintain a consistent world model rather than the just playing with words.
Weizenbaum took a "short cut" for the world model by going down the path of a Rogerian psychotherapy which allowed him to intentionally avoid the need for a world model in order to work with the words that are fed in.
GPT-3 and even more so, GPT-4 has a world model that it is able to work with and interact with.
If we are going to call GPT "just an advanced chat bot" then I would contend it is equally appropriate to call a human "just an advanced sea squirt."
reply