Will BCI enable human-monke communication by 2034?
5
14
140
2034
36%
chance

Will we see brain-computer interface-assisted cross-species primate communication within the next 10 years? "Communication" here covers any quasi-linguistic form of mutual information exchange, both sending and receiving, that exceeds our current abilities to clearly, demonstrably communicate with them, but without necessarily requiring explicit demonstration of the ability to form conventional sentences. That is, we already know they can fling monkey feces at us, and there is some debate as to whether they can "talk" in the conventional sense, but there is still room for BCI to enable greater communication: perhaps with monkey-brain to monkey-brain communication, they can learn how to meme with us, or perhaps Gorillaz might collaborate with an actual gorilla musician?

Relevant background information:

Arguably the question isn't "if" but "when", unless you believe they are fundamentally incapable, BCI technology will stall, or other cataclysmic events take precedence, so this question asks: next 10 years? If BCI-enhanced fuzzy-ape-to-hairless-ape communication is established in that period, then "YES."

NOTE: This doesn't cover other methods of enhancing communication, such as "what if a human learns how to speak a great ape language?" or vice versa. Thus, in such a special condition, the answer resolves to

  • "N/A" if the scientific community both accepts the existence of great ape language and a set of human speakers which can communicate with any other species of primate, before such happens,

  • but still "YES" if someone asserts such a claim and is only vindicated after the emergence of some method of BCI communication.

"NO" if 2034 Jan 1 will come without any kind of cybernetic chimpanzee camaraderie (or bionic bonobo brotherhood, or...)

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