Usually, when we think of AI, we think of Skynet or Ultron deciding to unleash war on humanity. Of course, the reality is something altogether different. What AI is in the current world is little more than algorithms that are used to curate news and entertainment feeds, strip data from digital interactions or recognize patterns in behavior and make predictions about future behavior based on that.
It’s the pattern recognition aspect that we are going to focus on today, specifically as it relates to language. We already make use of AI for human language. The predictive text on your phone is the most common example. Another is the use of AI to write simple articles about stock price updates and other rudimentary things for websites. The AI used can recognize and duplicate certain patterns in language so well it can be difficult to tell the difference in some cases. Now, imagine if that’s possible with animals.
Of course, that probably doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to use a computer to sit down and have a conversation with a flounder like a cyborg Aquaman or learn about the weather down south from a goose that just flew back north for the summer like a real-life Dr. Doolittle. Though that would be pretty cool. However, we might be getting to the point that AI could be used to decipher the languages of certain animals.
Let’s back up a moment. We know that most, if not all animals have certain forms of communication with each other. Birds know when to travel north or south as part of their migration and can somehow figure out how to change positions in their V as they fly. Even ants can somehow communicate with each other to locate a food source, or in the case of African army ants, how to cross whole rivers by working together. We also know that some can understand at least some human language. Dogs, cats, horses and a few others are capable of recognizing various commands and also developing their own ways of being understood. There is even evidence that aquatic animals have actual languages, with specific words for things and actions. Some, like dolphins and orcas even form their own dialects amongst their individual pods. So there is definitely a reason to think that there may be real, recognizable languages among at least some animals.
And it turns out that some researchers are beginning to apply AI to this question. Early analysis shows there are language-like patterns in the way these animals communicate. So, does this mean that we’ll be sitting around, holding forth with our pets using a combination of Google Translate and Alexa as an interpreter? Probably not. So what is the practical use of such a thing? Let’s speculate a bit.
If we could actually decipher animal communication, we could do things like warning them of an environmental threat. If there is a train that gets derailed in the Rockies with dangerous chemicals, a broadcast with whatever sound various animals would recognize as a warning could be put out. Or in the ocean, if an oil rig springs a leak like Deepwater Horizon a few years ago, a sonar signal could be put out that lets dolphins know they should stay away.
How could TARTLE help with this effort? If there are users who spend a lot of time in nature recording animals, they could share it with those developing this AI, giving them more data to work with. Or if other researchers got to the point of conducting experiments, TARTLE members could volunteer to take part at home with their pets. The possibilities are potentially huge.
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