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The Internet AI Science

The Internet Is Coming To the Rest of the Animal Kingdom (ieee.org) 42

Wave723 shared this article from September's issue of IEEE Spectrum about an usual project by a leading group of cognitive biologists and computer scientists: Dubbed the Interspecies Internet, the project aims to provide intelligent animals such as elephants, dolphins, magpies, and great apes with a means to communicate among each other and with people online.

And through artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and other digital technologies, researchers hope to crack the code of all the chirps, yips, growls, and whistles that underpin animal communication.

Oh, and musician Peter Gabriel is involved. "We can use data analysis and technology tools to give non-humans a lot more choice and control," the former Genesis frontman, dressed in his signature Nehru-style collar shirt and loose, open waistcoat, told IEEE Spectrum at the inaugural Interspecies Internet Workshop, held [in July] in Cambridge, Mass. "This will be integral to changing our relationship with the natural world."

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The Internet Is Coming To the Rest of the Animal Kingdom

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  • Sorry, had to be first

  • "And through artificial intelligence, #####virtual reality######, and other digital technologies, researchers hope to crack the code of all the chirps, yips, growls, and whistles that underpin animal communication. "

      Huh? It looks like whoever wrote this just shoveled a bunch of high tech buzzwords into his article to make it sound...wait for it.....

    EXCITING!

    • He forgot Blockchain, Video Conferencing, IOT and Augmented Reality.

      Really, how can it be exciting without at least Blockchain at a minimum!
  • Johnny Mnemonic had that dolphin with something like this.

  • I am not sure this is a good idea. Humans communicate among each other and look how we have messed up the world.
  • ...nobody knows you're just another DNA permutation.

    "Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest."

    • by Empiric ( 675968 )

      "In the days when you consumed what is dead, you made it what is alive. When you come to dwell in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"

      Advanced question left as an exercise for the reader.

  • Can't wait for frogs to troll us with human memes ... and any other switch-a-roos..

    [Which would be a great name for a bi-sexual Kangaroo. (If you don't understand, watch "Arrival".)]

  • provide intelligent animals such as elephants, dolphins, magpies, and great apes with a means to communicate

    What if they all turn out to be specist, fascist, bloodthirsty, bigoted and uncaring about minorities? Should we then ban them?

    • provide intelligent animals such as elephants, dolphins, magpies, and great apes with a means to communicate

      What if they all turn out to be specist, fascist, bloodthirsty, bigoted and uncaring about minorities? Should we then ban them?

      Susan Wojcicki, Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and the rest of Silicon Valley will have their ban-hammers dressed in hunter orange for any animals that express any opinions that lean to the right of Karl Marx. The poor elephants won't stand a chance out of the gate for being "alt-right adjacent" while donkeys can call for genocide and be celebrated as being "stunning and brave".

      Strat

      • It just wouldn't be a /. comment section if someone didn't start bellowing incoherently about their political rivals below an entirely unrelated story.
  • Bored rich guys (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @01:19PM (#59144328)

    Maybe I’m the only one, but whenever I read (or hear) a story about some generic team of “leading scientists”... my first thought is the scene in Raiders if the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones is trying to find out what’s happened to the ark and is stonewalled with the assurance that “top men” are looking into it.

    I read the article. This is a vanity project dreamed up by Peter Gabriel, who has lots of money and apparently nothing better to do with it. Reading between the lines, it looks like there’s some buy-in from people who were into teaching monkeys sign language back before that turned into a dead-end. And somehow or other Vint Cerf may be associated with this.

    • Monkey sign-language is a dead end? From what I heard about the chimp Washu, it seemed to be working.

      • Washoe died in 2007.

        The reason you don’t hear much about chimp sign language anymore is it became apparent they couldn’t learn more than roughly 300 words - basically showing roughly the same intelligence as a border collie.

    • by Empiric ( 675968 )

      "...monkeys sign language back before that turned into a dead-end."

      A dead end? Ironic terminology, but it demonstrated, say, Koko the gorilla is as sentient as you are. A major scientific achievement.

      Now there's just the question of how to assimilate that fact. If you are somehow distinct, for the purposes of, oh, having any rights and such, you just need to have a reason why.

      Theists have theirs. Your turn.

  • Sorry, but I struggle to find a point here. The human race is too far gone to save. Even if we did find a more intelligent form of life, we're too stupid to learn from it. We can't even learn from our own mistakes in history to avoid repeating them over and over again.

  • The internet is the unification tool of troublemakers and terrorists. It is just a matter of time until the animals collectively figure out it would be best for them to be rid of us. Didn't anyone see ZOO?
  • by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @01:47PM (#59144408) Journal

    RFC-1149. [ietf.org]

  • You have no idea what horrors this will unleash upon us all.

  • Just wait until the monkeys figure out that if they start solving Captchas for the script kiddies: that the script kiddies will pay the monkeys a buck or so for a few thousand Captcha solutions, which is enough to order some gourmet monkey treats.

  • And I thought the song was just a joke.... Imagine what happens when animals can communicate - that implies they can unionize and multiply their forces by planning special events and coups against the human oppression.

    • by fenrif ( 991024 )
      But then we can just shout at them for appopriating human culture, and tell them they aren't diverse enough because they don't have any cows which identify as shrimp in the organisation. It'll crumble within a year. Works every time.
    • Imagine what happens when animals can communicate - that implies they can unionize and multiply their forces by planning special events and coups against the human oppression.

      All jokes aside, the main obstacle is not only communication (lots of animals do) but cooperation (not all animals are used in working together toward a common goal that is impossible to achieve by individual). It's usually exemplified in hunting strategies: cat are far from stupid, but they won't organize themselves as a group to catch larger preys, hunting is still an individual matter.
      Most apes are relatively close to us, they able to communicate, but they are seldom able to manage to hunt a large prey s

      • by mysidia ( 191772 )

        cat are far from stupid, but they won't organize themselves as a group to catch larger preys

        Uhm: domesticated cats and some wildcats, maybe. You assume they're not capable of cooperation, but it may be well more of a "choice" about what is better for survival -- Competition Versus Agreeing to cooperate. And for small predators in many situations: competition may be the inherent choice Due to the Prisoner's dilemma, with few advantages from the limited cooperation that could be possible to be had, B

  • It's all 'AI' this and 'AI' that. Most of it is the same bullshit they've been using for the last 30 years but didn't call it 'AI' then. It's like rebranding a breakfast cereal.
  • When lions find all those YT videos showing them how to barbecue their buffalo, the Apocalypse starts tomorrow.

  • What is the point of doing this? is there money to be made? No one is going to dump money into doing this if there is no money to be made.

  • I met horses, ants like me, chicken, a mouse, cats, dogs, frogs,an elephANT, etc. The more, the better. ;)

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