It's hard to tell from the article what exactly is going on, but one thing caught my eye:
"They enable the robots to refer to places they haven't been or even places that they imagine beyond the edges of their explored world," she said.
... this is the linguistic property of Displacement. If this is true it's a huge deal. The real kicker is whether they can talk about things that don't exist.
And then you would have people reminding you that Skynet is already self-aware.
It IS crazy cool, even for a non-linguist like me. It reminds me of some of the ways non-human apes have been observed to manipulate the language they've been given.
Hah - we watched Terminator on the day of, you know? I had never seen it.
Cool things should be cool for everybody! That's what's so neat - true displacement is something that animals by and large don't/can't do (to the best of our observations). Although Bonobos are freakin amazing.
I should point out that the programming parameters are what gave the robots displacement... the language is not just growing on its own here, the programmers are giving it areas into which to grow.
Oh - your icon compels me to point out. In AKOTAS, the character Elaine of Carbonek (Galahad's mother) is portrayed by Helen of Narbonic. She's a mad theologian!
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-05-25 06:52 pm (UTC)It's hard to tell from the article what exactly is going on, but one thing caught my eye:
"They enable the robots to refer to places they haven't been or even places that they imagine beyond the edges of their explored world," she said.
... this is the linguistic property of Displacement. If this is true it's a huge deal. The real kicker is whether they can talk about things that don't exist.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-25 06:59 pm (UTC)It IS crazy cool, even for a non-linguist like me. It reminds me of some of the ways non-human apes have been observed to manipulate the language they've been given.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-25 07:22 pm (UTC)Cool things should be cool for everybody!
That's what's so neat - true displacement is something that animals by and large don't/can't do (to the best of our observations). Although Bonobos are freakin amazing.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-25 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-25 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-25 08:48 pm (UTC)