Learn about "iconic sounds" of language. Plus: artificial intelligence’s limitations, with AI pioneer Michael Wooldridge. Language may have started with "iconic sounds" rather than hand gestures by Grant Currin Ćwiek, A., Fuchs, S., Draxler, C., Asu, E. L., Dediu, D., Hiovain, K., Kawahara, S., Koutalidis, S., Krifka, M., Lippus, P., Lupyan, G., Oh, G. E., Paul, J., Petrone, C., Ridouane, R., Reiter, S., Schümchen, N., Szalontai, Á., Ünal-Logacev, Ö., & Zeller, J. (2021). Novel vocalizations are understood across cultures. Scientific Reports, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-89445-4 Ancestors may have created “iconic” sounds as bridge to first languages. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-05/uob-amh051021.php No shared language? No problem! People across cultures understand clues from ‘vocal charades. (2021, May 14). No shared language? No problem! People across cultures understand clues from “vocal charades.” Science | AAAS. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/no-shared-language-no-problem-people-across-cultures-understand-clues-vocal-charades Additional resources from Michael Wooldridge: Pick up "A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going" at your local bookstore: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250770745 Twitter: https://twitter.com/wooldridgemike Oxford faculty page: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/michael.wooldridge/ Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free!
Learn about "iconic sounds" of language. Plus: artificial intelligence’s limitations, with AI pioneer Michael Wooldridge.
Language may have started with "iconic sounds" rather than hand gestures by Grant Currin
Additional resources from Michael Wooldridge:
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free!
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/why-we-wont-have-robot-butlers-any-time-soon-w-ai-researcher-michael-wooldridge
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how language may have started with "iconic sounds" rather than hand gestures. Then, you’ll learn about the limitations of artificial intelligence, with help from leading AI researcher and University of Oxford professor Michael Wooldridge.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Researchers have found a missing link! No, not the missing link. That’s actually... not a thing. What I’m talking about is a transitional moment in the evolution of language. The new evidence isn’t an artifact from the past. It’s a new study involving hundreds of people who speak dozens of languages.
If you’re trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak your language, you’d probably turn to gestures to get your point across. You might walk with your fingers to say you’ll get there by foot, or mimic the act of writing to ask for a pen. These work because there’s a connection between the gesture and the idea you’re trying to get across. In linguistics terms, the gesture is iconic.
Evolutionary linguists have been debating whether sounds humans make are iconic. Everyone thinks some are. Meow, buzz, chirp. Some iconoclastic researchers are building the case that a lot of sounds convey something about the thing they mean.
To test out the theory, researchers started out with thirty sounds that English speakers had come up with to express basic concepts. Then they recruited more than 800 people representing 26 languages and asked each of them to listen to the sounds and guess what they mean.
Want to try it for yourself? Sure you do!
This first sound is an action. It means either hide, eat, or cut. Got it? Hide, eat or cut. Okay: Sound.
Alright, what do you think? If you guessed “cut” then you agree with the person who originally made the sound.
It’s time for round two! Does the following sound mean rock, water, or meat? Ready, okay: Sound.
And the correct answer is... water!
Finally, for round three, the options are good, bad, and no way. Alright: Sound.
If you guessed “good,” you are correct!
The participants in the, you know, real version of the study actually did very well, a lot better than random chance. Some of the sounds were, well, gimmes. For instance, about 99 percent of listeners knew that snores meant sleep. Demonstrative words were the hardest. Only about 35 percent of listeners correctly guessed the word “that.” But most participants in the study were guessing from a list of six options, so even that far exceeded random chance.
What does all this mean for evolutionary linguistics? Well, these results don’t jive with the conventional belief that the sound of most words has nothing to do with whatever the word means. That makes it a lot easier to imagine how our ancestors may have begun developing words during the earliest days of spoken language. That just leaves me with one question: [Tim the Toolman Taylor grunt-question-sound]
When you see artificial intelligence in movies and TV shows, it's usually in the form of a thinking, feeling, superintelligent machine that can do everything humans can and more. But according to our guest today, that's a long way off — and it's not even the central goal of AI research in the first place. Michael Wooldridge is a professor and head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford who's been at the heart of AI community for 25 years. He's also the author of the new book "A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going." We asked Michael how far we've come in the development of AI — and how far we still have to go.
[CLIP 5:29]
Michael explained to us that a thinking, feeling machine isn't even all that useful for most purposes. After all, would you really want that kind of thing from your car or your toaster? I probably wouldn't. Again, that was Michael Wooldridge, head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and author of the new book "A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going." He'll be back tomorrow to tell us whether we should fear the robot apocalypse.
Let’s recap the main things we learned today
http://www.athingforwords.com/words/lets-talk-turkish/
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ASHLEY: The writer for today’s first story was Grant Currin.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer, who was also an audio editor on today’s episode
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few hours. DOH! I mean, minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!