Can AI Decode the Meaning of Animal Communications?
“Ever since I was a child, I’ve dreamed of understanding what animals are saying. How wonderful that is now a real possibility.”
Dr. Jane Goodall
Introduction
This article explores AI’s potential to decode the meaning of animal communications, the pursuit of that goal, the promising benefits of achieving it, and the formidable challenges in realizing it. Spoiler alert: decoding animalese is not as easy as our wide-eyed friend in the image above strapping on a futuristic set of earphone decoders, but it's equally awe-inspiring.
Animal Communications
The concept of umwelt describes each species' unique combined sensory experience — its sensescape if you will. A species' umwelt shapes its communication methods. For instance, if an umwelt emphasizes hearing, a species is more likely to communicate in sounds. Our animal kin communicate in a wide variety of ways, including:
Vocalizations: dogs bark, birds chirp, elephants trumpet, sperm whales click, and reef inhabitants burble.
Body movements: dogs wag tails, bees waggle dance, and elephants ear slap and trunk curl.
Facial expressions: chimps, dogs, and horses signal through facial expressions.
Chemical odors: bees, ants, dogs, monkeys, and lions converse with chemical signals.
Bioluminescence: fireflies and many marine animals message using light.
Most, if not all, animals are multimodal communicators. The human umwelt is limited in type and range.
Traditional Efforts to Decode Animal Communications
Scientists have long researched animal communication by directly observing, recording audio/video, and analyzing the observations and recordings.
AI-Based Efforts to Decode Animal Communications
Even with AI, decoding animal communications starts with observing and recording. However, unlike traditional analysis, AI also employs sophisticated computers or cloud computing platforms along with machine learning algorithms, deep learning algorithms and statistical modeling tools. They permit rapid analysis of large data sets collected from observations and recordings and empower scientists, acting in the mode of cryptographers, to discern communication signals, patterns, and potential meanings that might elude them due to the overwhelming datasets.
Organizations Using AI to Attempt to Decode Animal Communications
The impressive organizations using AI to attempt to crack the code of creature communications include:
Project CETI: According to the New Yorker, the Cetacean Translation Initiative — Project CETI, for short, "represents the most ambitious, the most technologically sophisticated, and the most well-funded effort ever made" to decode animal communications. With AI, CETI attempts to interpret sperm whale vocalizations, called clicks and codas. It uncovered that sperm whale clicks are more intricate than previously thought. Whales combine clicks in various ways to create codas that convey more information, suggesting a complex communication system.
Earth Species Project: With AI’s help, this organization, abbreviated ESP, works to decipher bird, primate, cetacean, elephant, bat, amphibian, dog, and cat communications. Its website (https://www.earthspecies.org/) showcases its work on multimodal AI and collaboration with bioacousticians, laying the groundwork for future breakthroughs in elephant communication. We already know elephants communicate in infrasonic rumbles.
Save the Elephants: Earlier this month, Save the Elephants, Colorado State University, and Elephant Voices, announced that they had leveraged AI to tentatively conclude that elephants call each other by name.
DeepSqueak: It applies AI to analyze rodent vocalizations, unveiling a complex communication system previously unknown.
Interspecies Internet: This multidisciplinary think-tank seeks to accelerate our understanding of interspecies communication.
K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics (The Cornell Lab): Its “mission is to collect and interpret sounds in nature by developing and applying innovative conservation technologies across ecologically relevant scales to inspire and inform the conservation of wildlife and habitats.” Its projects include the Elephant Listening Project.
Numerous other scholars have participated in or reported on utilizing AI to interpret animal communications.
Challenges and Concerns Relating to Decoding Animal Communications
The journey to unravel animal communications faces many challenges and concerns:
Wide Variety: The kaleidoscopic variety and mixtures of animal communications challenge efforts to crack their meaning.
Human Umwelt: The umwelt of many creatures is broader than or otherwise different from humans. One dolphin communication researcher succinctly summarized this challenge: dolphins aren’t just "humans in wetsuits." AI will not turn researchers into Dr. Dolittles; thus, we often need special equipment to detect animal messages.
Unknown Contexts: Ascertaining a communication’s context and, thus, its apparent meaning is formidable.
Cocktail Party Problem: In natural settings, communications of a specific species or individual animal are regularly part of a broader chattersphere of other animals and sounds. Picking out a particular communication amidst that hubbub is akin to doing so at a noisy cocktail party.
Uncertain Meaning: Even when detection and context are known, deciphering meaning is challenging.
Expertise: Progress with decoding animal communication necessitates the interdisciplinary teamwork of biologists, linguists, cryptographers, computer scientists, ethologists, mathematicians, neuroscientists, roboticists, zoologists, and others. Just as the Rosetta Stone couldn’t tell its story without experts from multiple fields, AI alone falls short.
Data Availability: Training AI models requires large and reliable datasets. These are much less available than data sets reflecting human communications and are often difficult and expensive to obtain.
Natural Environment: Research should favor natural environments over controlled settings for maximum reliability.
Communication Structures: Human language is highly structured, with complex grammar, syntax, and cultural nuances, while animal communications appear less structured. Experts frequently engage in heated kerfuffles about whether animals use languages, a debate generally centered around the definition of language.
Anthropomorphization: Animal communications interpreted through a human lens risks misinterpretation.
Ethics: If we understand animal needs and desires, do we have a heightened duty to respond to them? A duty to respect their privacy and concerns about data collection even if that interferes with our communication research? What if some animals don't want to communicate with us? Why trust us? We’ll need ethical guidelines and protocols to address these concerns.
Misinterpretation: Misinterpreting animal communication poses a threat to their well-being.
Exploitation: Understanding animal communication provides a potential avenue for exploitation
Benefits of Decoding Animal Communications
While many challenges and concerns relating to decoding animal communications exist, potential benefits seem to make the effort well worthwhile:
Deeper Appreciation and Awe: Understanding animal communication offers a profound opportunity to cultivate a deeper appreciation and awe for animals, potentially reducing their exploitation. The 1970 album Songs of the Humpback Whale serves as a precedent. By riveting the public, it transformed our perception of whales and ultimately contributed to the International Whaling Commission's 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling.
Human Exceptionalism: As we better grasp animal communication, the notion of broad human exceptionalism may further crumble. As Karen Bakker, author of The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants, said in a Vox interview:
Maybe as we refine our understanding of nonhuman language, we'll have a much more inclusive definition or understanding of language as a continuum across the tree of life. … This is pretty profoundly destabilizing. And it's also destabilizing to realize that we were essentially deaf to all of these sounds going on all around us. We were the ones who were hard of hearing. And there's a feeling of, I think, chagrin, and maybe mild embarrassment, that all of these sounds were there all the time, and we just never realized.
Conservation Efforts: Understanding animal communication is a powerful tool for advancing wildlife conservation. We'll explore this in more depth in next month's article.
Veterinarian Care: Veterinary medicine stands to gain significantly from our ability to comprehend animal communications.
Pet Relationships: A deeper understanding of pet communication holds the potential to profoundly enrich our relationships with them and enhance their well-being. The benefits are mutual: interacting with pets demonstrably elevates serotonin and dopamine levels, contributing to improved mental health in humans.
Scientific Progress: Grasping animal communication will almost surely unlock new insights into animal behavior, cognition, and evolution, benefiting science.
Conclusion
Children's television host Fred Rogers said: "True listening is not just about using your ears. It's about using your heart, your mind, and your imagination to understand what the other person is saying." AI presents a transformative tool for truly listening to our fellow creatures and responding accordingly.
This article is based on many scholarly papers, news articles, podcasts, and other information, including the recommended articles below.
Next month, we’ll investigate AI’s potential impact on wildlife and its conservation.
Frank Brown, UU of Arlington, Virginia
Further Reading:
How tech is helping us talk to animals
How Scientists Are Using AI to Talk to Animals
Can artificial intelligence really help us talk to the animals?
Animal Behaviorist: We’ll Soon Have Devices That Let Us Talk With Our Pets