I think this is probably neuroscience vs psychology. We can explain a lot with neuroscience, but two people with essentially identical brain chemistry can have very different psychology. There are people out there who have beliefs and cognition processes that I find completely incomprehensible despite having the same brain and even sharing a language.
I'm not sure how I'd have a meaningful conversation with an animal that has such a different worldview. I guess there's a simple level of conversation, like that which we have with dogs - fetch the stick, good boy, food, need to wee, love the human, etc. But if that's the limit of what we can discuss with dolphins (or an actual AI) then I'd be disappointed.
But at some level, you can "just be" with the other organism. Eat some food. Make some dopamine. Hang out. I feed my dog. I exercise my dog. I exercise myself. I eat. We sit down together, I pet her. We both create oxytocin and perceive that positively when I pet her. Most animals map that to "safety" or "contentment". Survival needs satisfied for now. Who knows what that maps to for my dog, but we exist in a pretty similar state in that moment of being. That very desire to try and map the dolphin is our "I" narrative that /constantly/ wants to map things out and figure the patterns out.
Dolphin has concept maps between objects and semantic meaning and an "I" narrative. Dog is almost fully present with no narrative constantly mapping past to future. We probably have a lot more in common with dolphin, if we can map that somehow.
This article is right up this conversation's alley; about chimps being fascinated with crystals. And I am not saying it is wrong to map and communicate, communication means cooperation, deeper connection and meaning, discovering boundaries of if we can socially coordinate and form new and exciting groups and collaboration, etc.
I wonder how we would "hang" with an actual AI, though? I guess I'm assuming that it will be a meta-level above the chat and prompts. That's just the ocean it swims in, not it's actual consciousness.
I think this is probably neuroscience vs psychology. We can explain a lot with neuroscience, but two people with essentially identical brain chemistry can have very different psychology. There are people out there who have beliefs and cognition processes that I find completely incomprehensible despite having the same brain and even sharing a language.
I'm not sure how I'd have a meaningful conversation with an animal that has such a different worldview. I guess there's a simple level of conversation, like that which we have with dogs - fetch the stick, good boy, food, need to wee, love the human, etc. But if that's the limit of what we can discuss with dolphins (or an actual AI) then I'd be disappointed.