Animal Lingo

We aren’t the only animals whose behaviors are being scooped up, fed to, and swallowed by the AI “machine learning” process to surface as data. AI is also focused on other animals and insects in various ways. One is to communicate, to talk with animals. Recently, the New York Times front page report “Dogs Can Develop Vocabularies Like Toddlers” tells how, with focused training, specific dogs, Border Collies (who lead the pack on words learned, up to and over 1000) have mastered the names of more than 100 toys, a skill called label learning. Linguistic research has also centered on African Grey parrots, chimpanzees, whales, as well as dogs, cats, pigs, and bees, among other species.

As massive quantities of information are steadily collected via the internet and other sources and combined with software advances, AI’s abilities are speeding up.  Powerful new AI tools include information being gathered by small, lightweight recorders now installed around the globe that continually record animal sounds, adding to the rapidly improving algorithms. AI analyses are opening the possibility of enabling communication between human and other animal languages, as researchers study basic properties of language—the relationship among words that creates meaning—in search of ways to translate animal languages. We know how to talk to our animal pets. If this theoretical possibility becomes a reality, we could indeed talk with and understand diverse species responses. With more data, information about animal communication will grow. However, AI and deep-learning tools will not magically allow us to translate all animal sounds into English. Biologist’s research is also needed to observe and identify sounds and behaviors to answer practical questions. Ethical issues remain.

Our shared language allows us to understand the experiences of other humans. Will our ability to communicate with animals increase our empathy towards them or make it easier to exploit them? What if animals don’t want to have a conversation? And, maybe, you don’t want to know just what your pet is really thinking or the reasons the chicken crossed the road.