Ai, Japanese chimpanzee who counted and painted dies at 49

reconnecting 190 points bbc.com

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shevy-java

I misread this as AI initially ...

The only art-centric monkey I knew was Koko, the female gorilla.

Here she draws some things:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iixL0CMOAM

Smartest monkey I ever saw was Kanzi though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENKinbfgrkU

I think it is only a question and matter of time before the prison systems for monkeys may have to be reconsidered completely. Of course even smarter monkeys than Kanzi won't reach human brain functions, but they are also very convincingly extremely clever and can adapt. Numerous videos where monkeys handle (!) smartphones show this already and this is just the beginning. Like, in the movie Planet of the Apes. Just long-term in smaller steps.

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conception

Fun fact! Koko’s abilities to sign and communicate were a total fraud!

https://bigthink.com/life/ape-sign-language/

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junon

To dismiss it as total fraud is disingenuous, but I do agree that the personification of some of those videos is quite egregious. I don't think anyone expected a chimp to make coherent, grammatically correct sentences. But the relationship between sign/vocalization and emotion/desire is strong and seen in many animals, such as parrots. It depends on your definition of communication I suppose.

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OkayPhysicist

The main issue wasn't grammatical correctness, it was being grammatical at all. It's not surprising that an animal can learn individual pieces of vocabulary: anybody whose dog loses its mind when the word "walk" is mentioned, or watched meerkats for significant periods of time can observe vocabulary in animals.

Koko was intended to be taught grammar, specifically the ability to express new thoughts by combining her vocabulary in an ordered way. Despite Francine Patterson's best efforts to convince the world otherwise, Koko never achieved this.

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mettamage

There's some research that some birds understand grammar^[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmys2abx4co

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conception

There’s no evidence that KoKo ever communicated a word and had understanding of what the word meant outside of basic Pavlovian associations.

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moi2388

Is it?

Afaik they didn’t actually sign anything other than random words, an “food” every second word or so..

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bbor

And before someone comes in to correct: yes, we're monkeys. No, the taxonomists don't know any better! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey

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b00ty4breakfast

I remember reading or hearing that if we follow taxonomnic rules from the ground up, humans would be classified as hagfish (don't quote me on that, I have a terrible memory)

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tomjakubowski

We've not made much progress on this front since Plato's featherless biped.

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rafram

That article seems to say that the standard definition of "monkey" does not include apes, and thus humans.

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technothrasher

It doesn't just seem to say it, it says it explicitly: "monkeys are, in terms of currently recognized taxa, non-hominoid simians". Perhaps the accepted terminology may change at some point, but currently apes are not monkeys.

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bicolao

I misread this as AI initially ...

The japanese have it harder because "ai" means love. But perhaps "love" will be written in kanji while "AI" in katakana, so writing form is not confusing.

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kagevf

From what I've seen, "AI" is typically written with the "Roman" (latin) letters, or translated as 人工知能 (AI) or as 生成AI (generative AI like LLMs).

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dejj

I think this was a powerful lesson on the dangers of AI. Which by the way means 'love' in Chinese.

Elon Tusk, Rick and Morty, S4E4: https://youtu.be/xQHCz9ZZorA?t=129

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DroneBetter

it's weird to see that 6 years ago the public consensus on Musk was just that he was a well-intentioned soft-spoken nerd who liked computers and found himself with inadvertent money to allocate altruistically

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mettamage

It also means love in Japanese!

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stevenwoo

An anthropologist writes about communication and language in The Language Puzzle, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/steven-mithen/the... , TLDR, a little speculative but no primate exhibits evidence beyond a very primitive form of communication - only the extreme outliers are used in demonstrations, which are not much upon closer examination, there’s probably an evolutionary step needed for any other primate than man to use language as far as we can tell. There are key differences in brain and vocalization physiology between humans and other primates .

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navigate8310

Here's Rambo, an orangutan, driving a golf cart in Dubai: https://youtu.be/ERTrOwEb5M8

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DroneBetter

is there any further information on how she was trained and whether it used a reward for reaching objectives like teaching Kanzi (a bonobo) to play Minecraft? did a human demonstrate the controls or was there a simulation before the actual vehicle? or a hardcoded speed limit that was slowly raised?

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brap

Koko, that chimp’s alright.

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29athrowaway

Koko's communication skills turned out to be a scam.

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plaguuuuuu

I think about this way, would you stick a five year old in a prison?

What about an intellectually disabled adult?

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ChrisMarshallNY

Don't call him a monk- aaaaarghhh...

https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/The_Librarian

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mrintegrity

Would love to see some of his paintings, let me just google "AI chimp painting" .. oh..

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fyltr

There are some of them in this article https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-017-0604-0

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mrintegrity

Thanks, they seem like more than just random splashes of color.. possibly I'm anthropomorphising but it feels like it was straining to draw something specific like a young child would.

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c22

I agree there is intent there, but it doesn't look like an effort to draw a still life, more like the chimp was fascinated with the patterns and techniques it could manipulate.

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shevy-java

Yes, same with Koko. I think they do not fully understand art and abstraction, nor profits made by good art. It is too abstract.

They can, however had, understand sign language and symbol language, and basically that art is also an abstraction. Will probably take a while before we can identify abstract art by apes.

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falloutx

Hey, she did her best.

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baxtr

It’s hardly distinguishable from modern art though!

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numpad0

I've found another^[1] on a blog post^[2], captioned as follows:

  Frontispiece 1. Art drawn by chimpanzee Ai using sharpies(Saito, 2008)[p.19]
  Frontispiece 2. Art styles of 4 adult chimpanzees(Saito, 2008). Guess which one was by Ai[p.20]

Not sure what the background of the author is, but this essay/lecture note discusses ego or literal self-awareness of apes contrasted against human children, using quotes from books. Apparently apes don't exhibit explosive growth of vocabulary, show use of syntax etc etc, and are therefore not able to acquire language. The post later also argues their ego may be on the edge of formulating but must be weak/incomplete.

There's also magazine excerpt^[3] on a page on relevant Kyoto University research center comparing an inpainting task done by a chimpanzee and a human child of 3 years old, showing that chimpanzees can only recognize and trace existing patterns, whereas kids go and complete the face with eyes, nose and mouth.

  1: https://kyoikugenri2019.up.seesaa.net/image/2017-10-132018.11.52.jpg
  2: https://kyoikugenri2019.seesaa.net/article/471281414.html
  3: https://www.wrc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/ja/publications/AyaSaito/kagaku084.html

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ii41

Ai is a she. Ai is a common given name for girls in Japanese.

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Natfan

and this, folks, is why they/them exists.

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walthamstow

Born wild, Ai was soon taken into captivity and sold to KUPRI in 1977 by an animal trader (this type of sale became illegal in 1980 with Japan's ratification of CITES).

So how do we do this kind of thing now?

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shevy-java

I think monkeys are still bred in some zoos. I know that because there is typically media outrage when monkeys are killed in zoos when they were overbred. It's a very questionable system, since they are basically prisoners, then kind of forced or encouraged to breed, and then whacked to death when there are "too many". It's weird because zoos also claim to help preserve some species.

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lukan

Zoos do help to preserve species. Whether that is worth it, when their natural habitat is destroyed is a different question.

And if we agree there should be Zoos (I don't) then breeding the animals there is definitely nicer, than capturing a wild animal and force it to adopt to the prison livestyle.

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saidnooneever

doing something good doesn't make other things also good. there is some kind of demand they are servicing or a need they are having which they cant meet in some other way (finances..) though, which is likely the root of the issue rather than the zoos' existence itself. this is ofcourse ignoring the opinion (which i also hold) that zoos themselves are essentially or inherently bad. kids' enjoyment is not a good reason for cruelty and imprisonment/enslavement. neither is money or anyhting else. Domesticated animals is a different story.

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brador

Why should we?

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hxugufjfjf

Impossible to not make a joke about this being just more ai news on the front page.

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slfnflctd

Apparently, since the majority of top level comments right now - about 6 at the time of my comment - are making basically the same joke.

I thought this place was supposed to be better than reddit in such ways. Do better, HN.

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echelon_musk

Reminds me of AiAi in Super Monkey Ball.

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eej71

Glad to see I wasn't the only one! That Super Monkey Ball game on the GameCube was just amazing.

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echelon_musk

It was all about the party games. Especially target and golf!

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grugdev42

For anyone who is interested in this sort of thing, I can recommend this book:

Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees by Roger Fouts

Absolutely brilliant!

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dougSF70

An important comma

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ASalazarMX

Otherwise we would be unaware thay Ai the chimpanzee counted and painted dies. I wonder what happened at her 49th birthday to spur that hobby.

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comrade1234

My coworkers gifted me a painting by cheeta (the last chimp to play him) when I left the job. I framed it professionally in rattan and banana wood. The painting itself looks very similar to the paintings by Ai- same color schemes and patterns.

Edit to add instead of a new comment: I also remember how good of a life he had in retirement. He lived in an apartment-like dwelling. Slept in a bed, woke up and ate some fruit. Would plink on the piano awhile, maybe paint some, go for a swim or walk, maybe play the piano or paint some more.... it was amusing to read while slaving away at the coding mines.

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xvxvx

49 years enslaved in a laboratory, forced to learn tricks, likely deprived of food and comfort until she played along. No clue why Jane Goodall embraced such cruelty. Showing how intelligent non-human animals are, then forcing them to endure such inhumane treatment is par the course for 'scientists'.

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RankingMember

I'd genuinely like a black bar for this- cross-species respect.

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knowitnone3

is this the first generative Ai art?

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nephihaha

Probably a better artist.

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beaker52

Sleep easy fellow earthling, there’s a new Ai in town now.

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Sirikon

Hey universe, when people is asking for the end of AI, they don't mean this.

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ggm

Facilitated communication takes many forms.

Evidence of intentionality in the painting would demand a well structured experiment.

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fedeb95

does someone have a video about him counting and/or painting?

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pavel_lishin

Finally, some Ai art I can get behind.

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rurban

I just watched the horror movie Primate, where such a chimp got rabies and starts killing everyone by the numbers in very clever and horrid ways. Not funny

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gregjw

fell to my knees in a walmart

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aix1

More about Ai: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-017-0604-0

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pablonm

The Einstein of chimpanzees

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toomuchtodo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_(chimpanzee)

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falloutx

God took the wrong Ai, RIP

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big-chungus4

W Deji