Reading the essay on generative artificial intelligence and animal language (Big Read, January 18), I am reminded of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s observation in Philosophical Investigations that “if a lion could speak, we could not understand him”. There have been numerous reports of hallucinations enriching the output of these applications. How could we trust a “translation” from a lion or lemming or lemur to be anything but fantastic?
Henry Wessells
Author, ‘A Conversation Larger Than the Universe: Readings in Science Fiction and the Fantastic 1762–2017’
Upper Montclair, NJ, US
