There are many times when I question the so called advancements we make. I think it’s interesting that artificial intelligence is capable of doing art and writing movie scripts, amoung other things. But are those really the types of things we need it to do? I saw a post online the other day that said, “I wanted A.I. to do the dishes and clean the house, so that I had time to do art and write stories, not for A.I. to write stories and do art so I could do the dishes and clean the house.” Seemed like a valid point.
Like I think it would be great if we could somehow come up with something to translate what animals and birds are saying, but that doesn’t seem to be much of a priority. It would be nice to know what the dog is thinking or what she wants when she stands and stares at me. The cat, I’m not sure I want to know. But there are certain wild animals where it would come in handy.
Like the other evening. It was a nice evening and we were sitting on the back deck enjoying it. I noticed a bird flitting around a bush not far away and wondered what it was. My wife suggested it was some sort of sparrow, but I wasn’t sure.
Now I have to admit, I like birds and consider myself a very beginning bird watcher. And sparrows are a bit of a nemesis. There are two many of them. They are all similar, with very minor differences, and you almost need the bird to come sit about two feet away to tell which is which. But just for the fun of it, I pulled out my phone and looked up “song sparrow”. I picked a short video with a song sparrow singing and turned it on. The song was pretty close to the bird in the bush. In fact, it was almost identical. The bird in the bush seemed to notice, as it suddenly flew over to a bush much closer and continued singing.
It was one of those times when I really wished I could translate what was going on. I have no idea if maybe I was flirting with the bird from the bush or what was going on. I was hoping he wasn’t expecting me to do some sort of mating dance. I really am not much of a dancer and I don’t know the steps.
Or it could be I was getting myself into a territorial dispute, which I thought to be more likely. The little bird didn’t seem too happy with me, and many birds are known to be quite territorial this time of year. I have seen a number of posts where people have been trying to cover surfaces that are reflective, because birds see their reflections and start attacking their reflection, thinking it is a rival.
So I quickly shut off the audio that was playing on my phone, which seemed to avoid any sort of confrontation. The little bird relaxed a bit and went back to his bush. I figured out what the bird actually was. So things worked out. But it would have been handy to have a translation before I got started.
Maybe researchers could start working on things like that. Like if you meet a bear in the woods, it would be handy to know if he wants to eat you, or is just passing through. Although that may not be the ideal time to figure that out.
But maybe when they are developing these things they could concentrate on developing things that people actually want. Like machines to clean the house and do the dishes. Leave the fun stuff to people.
And it would be really handy to not start a war with the birds in my backyard. Maybe someone could work on that.
