Crows can recognize geometric regularity

We have not taught apes sign language. They can learn and form crude signs and use them to respond to stimuli or for rewards (wanting an orange, for example) but they’re not meaningfully communicating. It’d be like me claiming I taught my dog English because he can press the little button that plays a sound of me saying “biscuit!” when he wants a treat (which you have to take away from him because he will just mash it, since dogs want dog biscuits).

Isn't that what communication is?

In a squishy philosophical sense, I think LLMs are doomed to hallucination/confabulation because we’re making systems that use language and hoping they figure out the basics of communication. That certainly is not how it works in humans:

> Did I not, then, as I grew out of infancy, come next to boyhood, or rather did it not come to me and succeed my infancy? My infancy did not go away (for where would it go?). It was simply no longer present; and I was no longer an infant who could not speak, but now a chattering boy. I remember this, and I have since observed how I learned to speak. My elders did not teach me words by rote, as they taught me my letters afterward. But I myself, when I was unable to communicate all I wished to say to whomever I wished by means of whimperings and grunts and various gestures of my limbs (which I used to reinforce my demands), I myself repeated the sounds already stored in my memory by the mind which thou, O my God, hadst given me. When they called some thing by name and pointed it out while they spoke, I saw it and realized that the thing they wished to indicate was called by the name they then uttered. And what they meant was made plain by the gestures of their bodies, by a kind of natural language, common to all nations, which expresses itself through changes of countenance, glances of the eye, gestures and intonations which indicate a disposition and attitude--either to seek or to possess, to reject or to avoid. So it was that by frequently hearing words, in different phrases, I gradually identified the objects which the words stood for and, having formed my mouth to repeat these signs, I was thereby able to express my will. Thus I exchanged with those about me the verbal signs by which we express our wishes and advanced deeper into the stormy fellowship of human life, depending all the while upon the authority of my parents and the behest of my elders.

(From the Confessions of St. Augustine)

In the sense that my cat communicates by meowing at me when it's dinner time, sure. But so far I don't think apes are signing about remembered events, future plans, or descriptions of non-immediate reality.

I know a dog that jumps on a door to indicate that she wants to go out in the big backyard.

Yesterday she did the same, but didn't want to use that exit when I opened the door, but went to another door and looked at me with a clear expectation that she wanted to use the smaller backyard instead.

That is a relatively advanced form of communication to me. She combined the "let me out" signal and indicated which backyard to use. The way she looked at me was also a form of communication.

Maybe, but then my dog also communicates with me via his “biscuit” button so mere “communication” isn’t a particularly high bar. I was disputing the “we’ve taught them sign language” part - because we haven’t, we’ve taught them signs and they try to use some of them. That is impressive and interesting but we shouldn’t oversell it

I think it's hard to define what meaningful communication is, exactly. By your standards, anybody who has worked a cash register would argue that a notable percentage of customers don't and perhaps can't meaningfully communicate.