Amazon Report Predicts Pet Translation Devices By 2027 (cbslocal.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Devices that can talk to our pet dogs and cats could be less than 10 years away, according to a report Amazon commissioned that was co-authored by futurist William Higham. "Innovative products that succeed are based around genuine and major consumer needs," Higham wrote, noting the tremendous amounts already spent on our pets, and concluding, "Somebody is going to put this together." Amazon already sells one dubious device that converts human voices into meows using samples from 25 cats, according to the Guardian. (One reviewer who tested the device wrote that "the cat seems puzzled.") But Amazon's report also cites the work of Con Slobodchikoff, a professor emeritus in Northern Arizona University's biology department, who spent 30 years studying the behavior of prairie dogs. Slobodchikoff discovered prairie dogs have different words for colors and for species of predators, and is now already raising money to develop a translation device for pets.
Although Slobodchikoff concedes that "With cats I'm not sure what they'd have to say. A lot of times it might just be 'you idiot, just feed me and leave me alone.'"

Comments

Obligatory

[pushing-robot]

http://imgur.com/6fAdnAX

Wild animals use a wide array of vocalizations. Animals raised by humans have a rather limited repertoire. I have a hard time believing any device could extract much more information from a bark or growl or meow or hiss than our own ears.

Re:Obligatory

[Rei]

The one field where humans vastly outperform all other species is communication. Chimps can solve problems as well as children, and even parrots and corvids with their tiny brains can work out surprisingly complex problems. Various animals show all sorts of ability to conceptualize, plan, etc. But in terms of conveying complex thoughts about novel situations to other members, no species comes close to humans.

When my parrot says "I want up", he doesn't have any clue what "I", "Want", and "Up" means. He just knows that if he says that sound, I'll offer him a finger to stand on. And he only started saying it because I kept repeating it, and he likes making sounds; learning the benefit of making that sound came second. To him, "I want cracker" and "I want peanut" are two entirely different sounds; every phrase is learned as a whole. The total "vocabulary" he can maintain is quite limited. It's not out of some lack of problem solving / reasoning ability; he solves all sorts of complicated puzzle toys that I give him. He just doesn't grok complex communication. Some sort of "translator" isn't going to change his limitations. I already know what his basic sounds mean - I've been around him plenty to read his vocalizations and body language**. But real *communication* requires something more.

Facebook has been working on a rather interesting technology focused on using semi-ballistic photons imaging to yield something like a compact, real-time, super high-res MRI. Elon Musk's Neuralink has even broader ambitions. Things like these may actually some day yield better insights into what our pets are thinking than what they're capable of vocalizing. Our pets are reasoning, thinking, feeling beings. But they simply cannot, on their own, communicate to us about with the same level of depth as their internal processes encompass.

** Here's your "Amazon Parrot Translator":
  Repeated triple cluck: Baby amazon wants food (goes away with age).
  Idle trilling with varying pitch: Content, often associated with preening behavior.
  Deep, almost clicky trilling: Playtime. Watch your fingers.
  Loud or crackly repetitive sounds, repetitive beeps, or saying learned sounds randomly without clarity or intensity: Nearing bedtime, common in the evenings.
  Saying learned sounds with clarity and intensity: Wants you to take a learned action associated with it, or otherwise trying to "take part" socially.
  Crackly whine: uncomfortable, doesn't like this situation. Often associated with moving away from the thing that's making him uncomfortable
  Sharp isolated trill: Alarmed
  Continuous sound like a cross between a goose honking and a chicken clucking, with spasmic motions: hormonal / mating dance
  No noise or highly pitch modulated sounds, while fanning the tail feathers and pulsating the size of the pupils: Crazy mode. DO NOT TOUCH. Common around cages with the "hot" amazon breeds.

No translator needed.

Re:Obligatory

[Chrontius]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_%28parrot%29

I think you will find you are absolutely wrong.

Before Pepperberg’s work with Alex, it was widely believed in the scientific community that a large primate brain was needed to handle complex problems related to language and understanding; birds were not considered to be intelligent, as their only common use of communication was mimicking and repeating sounds to interact with each other. However, Alex’s accomplishments supported the idea that birds may be able to reason on a basic level and use words creatively. Pepperberg wrote that Alex’s intelligence was on a level similar to dolphins and great apes. She also reported that Alex seemed to show the intelligence of a five-year-old human, in some respects, and he had not even reached his full potential by the time he died. She believed that the bird possessed the emotional level of a human two-year-old at the time of his death.

Alex’s last words to Pepperberg were: “You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.” These were the same words that he would say every night when Pepperberg left the lab.

(I can only hope my last words are as earnest.)

Alex was also able to coin terms to describe his experience - apple became the “ban-erry” because to him it apparently tasted like the combination of a banana and a cherry. Further, the damn bird seemed to me to be capable of sarcasm. (The way he would deliberately report incorrect results when he was fed up with an experiment is well-documented, and reminds me of the deadpan style of a couple people I know)

Re:Obligatory

[Rei]

You seem to think that I'm not familiar with Pepperberg's work. What parrot owner isn't?

Alex was also able to coin terms to describe his experience - apple became the “ban-erry” because to him it apparently tasted like the combination of a banana and a cherry.

Parrots love performing vocal "mashups". My aunt taught her Amazon the songs "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" and "Bali Ha'i", and the bird would sometimes sing "I left my heart, in Bali.... Bali.... heart!" and the like. That's normal parrot behavior. The key aspect is what happens next. If a parrot says "banerry" and you respond by giving it an apple every time, "ban-erry" is now the word for apple. Parrots are quite good at operant conditioning.

A standard trick for teaching parrots new words is to leave the room, have someone say the word, and then enter the room. Repeat. While parrots can pick up any random sounds, they're particularly prone to picking up "calls" to summon flockmates. Once it's saying the word as a call, you then repurpose it with conditioning to its proper meaning.

Further, the damn bird seemed to me to be capable of sarcasm. (The way he would deliberately report incorrect results when he was fed up with an experiment is well-documented, and reminds me of the deadpan style of a couple people I know)

And my amazon has the annoying habit of repeatedly insisting, "I want scratch" while he's standing on his cage until I come, and then when I come, only letting me scratch him for a few seconds before backing off and not letting me scratch him further. They can be real jerks sometimes ;)

As mentioned, they're not stupid animals. They learn what behavior, with their limited vocabulary, will achieve their desired results. Alex learned early on that the experiments stopped when he stopped participating properly.

Alex did many things that were impressive (which Pepperberg's later birds BTW failed to reproduce to the extent of Alex). But it's important to understand parrot limitations. If you have a parrot, try the following. Teach them "I want cracker" when you give them a cracker and "I want nut" when you give them a nut, but say "want" in different accent. You'll find that the parrot always matches the accent with the food. It doesn't understand that it's a sentence; it sees it as a single word, a single sound that it's repeating.

It's easy for humans to mistake this for stupidity, but it's not; parrots are excellent problem solvers. They can even be little manipulative bastards sometimes ;) But problem solving does not equal communicative ability.