Parrots learn to make video calls to chat with other parrots: study

Given how incredibly long some parrots live (usually longer than people) plus their need for attention and interaction, one could even argue our species is kind of ethically required to provide such a thing.

We just have to keep adtech out.

Xamayon• 3 years ago

Think of all the monetization possibilities - The AI could secretly teach your parrot to speak about how it would prefer a different (specific) brand of food, or that you should really buy nicer looking clothes from such and such store!

I find it hard to believe companies could resist such temptation for long, but agree that it does sound like it would be great for the birds (and possibly other pets) if done sanely without such contamination~

stevenjgarner2• 3 years ago

"The oldest known parrot was a cockatoo, at least 82 years old at its death." [1] Crazy

[1] https://www.petmd.com/bird/how-long-do-parrots-live

quercusa• 3 years ago

Previously (215 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35664219

TheOtherHobbes• 3 years ago

I'm baffled that we don't spend more time trying to understand sentience on earth. There's so much of it, it's so clearly intelligent, and it would be so useful for SETI etc.

But for some reason there's a bias towards assuming that "intelligent" means "can do differential equations" - which doesn't even apply to most humans.

JumpCrisscross2• 3 years ago

baffled that we don't spend more time trying to understand sentience on earth

Accidentally Ted Chiang [1].

[1] https://nautil.us/the-great-silence-237510/

stavros• 3 years ago

We're only looking for extraterrestrial intelligence because we secretly like to think that we're unique in the universe.

micromacrofoot• 3 years ago

Isn't it one of those things that's potentially useful for further research... but doesn't really have an apparent practical application? unfortunately we tend to prioritize things by what they can produce

lovemenot• 3 years ago

Since the Enlightenment, it has mainly been our use of language that underpinned humans' purported uniqueness. Prior to that, it was religion.

LLMs will be a challenge to the sense of entitlement which derives from this so-called uniqueness. I suspect another attempt to move those goal-posts is imminent.

> I'm baffled that we don't spend more time trying to understand sentience on earth

I wonder whether there exists enough tagged big data to train an LLM on any non-human language. If not, chat apps like this parrot app could be a step in the right direction.

Parrots learn to make video calls to chat with other parrots: study

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