Two Robots and a Pig

The time is 2035 and you are sitting in a room with two robots. You ask one of the robots if they can help you with a nuclear fusion problem you have. The robot says sure thing, hit me with it. After a few minutes of discussion, you finish. Then the robot turns to the other robot and speaks in a single burst of noise to the other robot. At the same time the other robot speaks back to the robot in again a single burst of noise. The conversation they have is over in a second or two. The first robot explains that they have the answer for you.

Great.

In that instant both robots communicated a few novels worth of information between them. Instead of speaking in words, they spoke in novels.

To us, a pig that oinks to another has very simple communication. We think of them as not clever and not really worthy of care or attention. Sometimes we even keep them in cages to reduce the cost of keeping them.

To those two robots you are a pig.