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Comment by rcme | Hacker News Reader

That’s not the conclusion at all. The article says monkeys can understand and produce words (via signs). They can’t talk because they don’t have control of their larynx. They’re mute essentially.

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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.

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.

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

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?

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

What's the hashrate of infinite monkeys on typewriters?

> Could we backport a blockchain experiment

Interesting.

Translating from human language to monkey language = backporting

Would it then be that:

AI language -> human language also equals backporting?

Chimpanzees are intelligent and willing to do something like communicating, and can maybe produce words/signs, but they don't produce sentences/syntax and they never ask questions. Supposedly parrots can do that one.

Related question: which animals understand humans pointing at things?

My dogs when I drop crumbs on the ground

There are a number of interesting videos on social media sites ostensibly demonstrating dogs and birds using buttons and tablets to generate reasonably coherent communication like might be expected out of a two year old. Some of these have some backing scientific literature that provide some validation of the claims. If true it would indicate they have quite advanced mental faculties and are basically entirely limited by the lack of a appropriate vocal system for generating human speech.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunny_(dog)

[2] https://youtube.com/@jenc2394

Rigorous research on speech and communication in non-humans

https://www.theycantalk.org/research

Those are less than "sentences" because word order doesn't matter and they're not recursive (so they can't go on forever).

This is overly pedantic. How many conversations with a two year old have you had?

Word order does not matter, recursion doesn't matter (a two year old can make a sentence go on forever without recursion even)

Two year olds learn a lot more language in a year than chimps can. Can't have a sentence like "dog bites man" without word order even if it's made of logograms.

Could stem cells be used to grow neurons on to monkeys' larynxes?

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