[xwdv]

This is called uplifting, and it should be possible to do it in the 21st century by using genetic engineering to give creatures progressively bigger and better brains with each generation.

When a brain is of sufficient capacity for consciousness to emerge, we can begin to educate these sentients, and teach them all we know, leaving them to figure out how they can apply our knowledge to their perspective of the world, which is alien to us.

Octopus for instance may begin to construct tools that will allow for them to practice aquaculture and build more civilized social structures that move them away from hunter-gatherer lifestyles. When they are not farming, they could develop written language to record their history and debts. Surely if you checked back in tens of thousands of years you would find advanced cities and societies as complex as human ones, except entirely underwater with occasional structures breaking above the surface.

Other creatures like chimpanzees could be taught how to work with humans as a cheap form of labor, digging ditches or mining resources.

[voodootrucker]

I think someone just did this to a monkey.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200618150301.h...