Reasoning models reason well, until they don't

I saw a meme that I think about fairly often: Great apes have learnt sign language, and communicated with humans, since the 1960's. In all that time they've never asked human questions. They've never tried to learn anything new! The theory is that they don't know that there are entities that know things they don't.

I like to think that AI are the great apes of the digital world.

Its worth noting that the idea that great apes have learnt sign language is largely a fabrication by a single person, and nobody has ever been able to replicate this. All the communication has to be interpreted through that individual, and anyone else (including people that speak sign language) have confirmed that they're just making random hand motions in exchange for food

They don't have the dexterity to really sign properly

Does that means intelligent is soul? Then we will never achieve AGI.

Citation needed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language#Criticism_a... - Not word for word, but certainly casting doubt that apes were ever really communicating in the way that people may have thought.

Searching for koko ape fraud seems to produce a lot.

You only need a citation for the idea that apes aren't able to speak sign language?

That article does completely refute 20k's claim that it was all done by one person though.

They claimed fraud by a single person, with zero replication. That’s both testable so they should be able to support it.

At the very least, more than one researcher was involved and more than one ape was alleged to have learned ASL. There is a better discussion about what our threshold is for speech, along with our threshold for saying that research is fraud vs. mistaken, but we don’t fix sloppiness by engaging in more of it.

I mean dogs can learn a simple sign language?

> The theory is that they don't know that there are entities that know things they don't.

This seems like a rather awkward way of putting it. They may just lack conceptualization or abstraction, making the above statement meaningless.

The way linguists define communication via language? Sure. Let's not drag the rest of humanity into this presumption.

> In his lecture, Sapolsky alleges that Patterson spontaneously corrects Koko’s signs: “She would ask, ‘Koko, what do you call this thing?’ and [Koko] would come up with a completely wrong sign, and Patterson would say, ‘Oh, stop kidding around!’ And then Patterson would show her the next one, and Koko would get it wrong, and Patterson would say, ‘Oh, you funny gorilla.’ ”

More weirdly was this lawsuit against Patterson:

> The lawsuit alleged that in response to signing from Koko, Patterson pressured Keller and Alperin (two of the female staff) to flash the ape. "Oh, yes, Koko, Nancy has nipples. Nancy can show you her nipples," Patterson reportedly said on one occasion. And on another: "Koko, you see my nipples all the time. You are probably bored with my nipples. You need to see new nipples. I will turn my back so Kendra can show you her nipples."[47] Shortly thereafter, a third woman filed suit, alleging that upon being first introduced to Koko, Patterson told her that Koko was communicating that she wanted to see the woman's nipples

There was a bonobo named Kanzi who learned hundreds of lexigrams. The main criticism here seems to be that while Kanzi truly did know the symbol for “Strawberry” he “used the symbol for “strawberry” as the name for the object, as a request to go where the strawberries are, as a request to eat some strawberries”. So no object-verb sentences and so no grammar which means no true language according to linguists.

https://linguisticdiscovery.com/posts/kanzi/

The exact title of the capacity is 'theory of mind' - for example, chimpanzees have a limited capacity for it in that they can understand others' intentions, but they seemingly do not understand false beliefs (this is what GP mentioned).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2008.02.010

Theory of mind is a distinct concept that isn't necessary to explain this behavior. Of course, it may follow naturally, but it strikes me as ham-fisted projection of our own cognition onto others. Ironically, a rather greedy theory of mind!

Can the dogs sign back? Even dogs that learn to press buttons are mostly just pressing them to get treats. They don't ask questions, and it's not really a conversation.

SO why wasn't the research continued further if results were good? My assumption is it was because of the - Fear of the Planet of Apes!

> So no object-verb sentences and so no grammar which means no true language

Great distinction. The stuff about showing nipples sounds creepy.

If apes started communicating mongs themselves with sign-language they learned from humans that would measn they would get more practice using it and they could evolve it over aeons. Hey, isn't that what actually happened?

They can like barf as part of a trick and do "thing we are searching for is in that direction" etc but not very abstract communications.