Animal Conversations: Exploring AI's Communication with Wildlife

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0:39A really interesting topic I've heard a lot of people on the bleeding edge of the AI space talking about is how AI will allow us to communicate with animals. Today on the podcast, we're going to do a bit of a deep dive into what this looks like, what the historical background on this, and where we see this going into the future. This is very interesting. We're going to break down some quotes and a recent report that came out of the Scientific American talking to a bunch of experts, scientists, and researchers in the space. So without any further ado, let's jump into it. I think what's really important to know is a little bit of the background on this.

1:12So back in the mid-20th century, a gorilla named Coco drew global attention with her ability to communicate using human sign language. So this is obviously a very unusual skill, but it sparked a very important debate in this whole arena with scientists. So many of them argued that despite, you know, Coco's ability to speak sign language or to sign, like, you know, some other animals that were taught to quote unquote speak, right? You have like parrots that can parrot you talk. A lot of scientists were arguing that those animals didn't genuinely comprehend the meaning behind their actions, and they also claimed that our efforts to teach animals human language, which essentially is a system of symbols representing abstract concepts, was essentially in vain.

1:56So, according to Karen Baker, who's a professor at the University of British Columbia and a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, this is what she had to say. She said, two distinct groups of researchers exist. One is keen on determining whether animals can engage in symbiotic communication, while the other suggests we're anochromorphic and we should seek to comprehend non-human communication in its own context. context. So she has a book that kind of outlines a lot of this. But with the advent of advanced sensors and AI technology, I think we're actually currently gaining a bit of a deeper understanding of how different species, including plants, communicate using their unique methods, right?

2:39Obviously, when we say communicate, this doesn't mean talk in the same way that humans may talk, but, you know, all different animals, plants, they're all communicating in different ways. And we're starting to understand and decode that and getting some really interesting takeaways. So Baker, who we quoted earlier, her book is called The Sound of Life, How Digital Technology is Bringing Us Closer to the World of Animals and Plants. That was published by Princeton University Press. And really, it explores this whole field of what's called digital bioacoustics. So she actually recently spoke with the Scientific American about how technology is changing our interactions with species, including bats and honeybees, and how these changes are really challenging our understanding of our relationships with other species.

3:24So over the years, I think humans have made a lot of different attempts to communicate with animals. You can just see, I mean, this isn't any surprise with how much we love our pets, our cats, our dogs, and all sorts of other pets. this is obviously something that a lot of people are very very interested in right so I think up until now these you know attempts were often met with controversy as they were seen as kind of being a being as over um anthro post-centric um and really kind of imposing human language on animals to measure their intelligence which you know isn't really a very accurate uh measurement of intelligence Baker on the other hand emphasizes that we need to kind of shift our focus from trying to make animals speak like us to actually understanding their inherent ability to communicate in complex ways, which can be very different from our own methods.

4:15So for instance, she actually references the concept of umwelt, which is the lived experience of organisms. We wouldn't expect a honeybee to communicate in human language, obviously, but we could explore the fascinating language of honeybees that hinge on vibration, position, and even sensitivity to the polarization of sunlight, something beyond our psychological capabilities. So this perspective has led to the rapid advancement of digital bioacoustics, which really has is allowing scientists to dive deeper into animal communication. The technology driving these breakthroughs, I think, is very impressive.

4:50Essentially, digital bioacoustic leverages small, lightweight digital recorders that can be installed in various environments. So we're talking about the Amazon rainforest or the Arctic. and you can stick these things on the backs of turtles, on the tops of mountains. And essentially, these devices continually record sound in really remote locations. They record even in complete darkness, which gives a huge influx of data. So this is where AI becomes absolutely critical. So using natural language processing algorithms, similar to those used in Google Translate, to kind of identify patterns, we can start to identify these patterns in non-human communication.

5:28So one example of these patterns is found in bats. So Yossi Yovel of Tel Aviv University monitored the vocalization of a group of Egyptian fruit bats. So his team actually used a voice recognition program to essentially correlate specific sounds with social interactions in these bats. So their findings after doing this really revealed that bats language is a lot more complex than previously understood. I mean, this isn't very surprising. This is obviously a language we haven't decoded. So I would assume it's a lot more, you know, complicated than we would originally imagine. But essentially, he says that bats argue over food.

6:06They use gender specific communication and they even have unique names. So mother bats lower their pitch when communicating with their babies. and this is something that kind of helps them to learn specific signals. So on a similar note, Tim Landgraf of Free University in Berlin uses AI to study honeybee communication. So he actually developed algorithms to track individual bees and determine the impact of one bee's communication on another. So Landgraf's research revealed very specific signals in bee language, including signals for danger and instructions for food gathering, which obviously is incredibly important for bees.

6:46So Landgraf's research essentially really kind of culminated in the creation of RoboBee, which is a robotic bee that could effectively communicate commands that the honeybees would follow. And I think this is obviously a very, this sounds so fascinating, this is so interesting, but I think what's really important here is this really proves the point that, you know, he kind of cracked the code on their communication and some of their language by being able to build a robo bee that was able to, you know, essentially communicate with other bees, since obviously we are not able to do that. But though replicating the success of the waggle dance experiment, that has proven very difficult.

7:26But despite the difficulty that they have found in being able to, you know, specifically do that, I think that, you know, there is a lot of thought-provoking philosophical and ethical questions that are being raised about, you know, the capabilities of language in non-humans and the potential for interspecies communication. So Becker compares the advent of digital bioacoustics to the invention of the microscope. The microscope obviously opened up an entire unseen world of microorganisms, which really revolutionized our understanding of life. And so similarly, digital bioacoustics really combined with artificial intelligence functions like a planetary scale hearing aid.

8:07So it's enabling us to listen in ways we couldn't before. It's really challenging traditional notions about the divide between humans and non-humans, and it is prompting new considerations for conservation and our relationships with the planet. You know, Baker obviously says this is very profound. So overall, I think this is an absolutely fascinating bit of technology. This is going to be really interesting in my opinion once we start translating this to dogs and cats or other animals that are very common pets i think if people could um maybe not even communicate with pets in a in a sense but if they could understand even you know even if we just got there to be able to understand what their pet was thinking based off of ai like imagine if you had an app on your phone you could point you know the camera at your dog uh listen to it barking how it's moving you can kind of um get those nonverbal cues of what it's saying but wouldn't it be interesting if there's an ai that could kind of tell you like exactly what your dog's thinking or saying all sorts of really interesting implications that i'm sure a lot of people would pay a lot of money for and be very interested in their development so overall i think this is an interesting space that a lot of people will be interested to follow