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Non-human Intelligence
There is no doubt that Koko the gorilla was special. Even a cursory glance reveals she was an ambassador for non human communication. She knew sign. She maintained a complex list of abstract words, using them correctly in in complex ways. Even words she was rarely exposed to managed to stick, like the word queen. She would refer to herself as queen, due to the amount of love and attention she received from care workers, scientists, and celebrities. She understood death. She emoted complex feelings about the loss of her cat, and her friend Robin Williams.
Koko’s last message was “Help Earth. Hurry!” That seems clear, but is seriously important to have a context in which that can be understood. You need access to the whole of it. A speech? A response to a question? It could have been coached. There are actually folks who suspect her use of language wasn’t as good as it was made to seem.
I can allow for her making mistakes, and using ambiguous signs. Not all humans command the same level of speech, and yet if someone stutters, I don’t assume idiocy. I definitely don’t assume a lack of sentience. I don’t assume illiteracy means a person is an idiot or lacks sentience. I do often wonder when hearing people get mad at non-hearing people for not responding if they lack intelligence. I know people who know their spouses are deaf and they get mad at their spouses for not responding.
There is evidence Koko taught another gorilla, Michael, sign. They even created their own signs.
Most impressively, she taught sign language to another gorilla, Michael, and exchanged unique signs with him that she did not use with handlers. She was deemed to be roughly as intelligent as a human child and many researchers feel that she was truly using language.
Humans who use language modify language. That’s interesting Koko and Michael also altered language, agreeing on their own signs. Did you hear about the AI computers that Google made and allowed them to talk to each other? When they started making up their own language, accelerating their ability to communicate in ways humans couldn’t understand, Google turned those guys off.
