· 2 min read

Speak to animals

In this decade we will use computer translation to speak to animals: whales, dogs, cats, bats, crows, octopus. We will discover that we have never been alone on this planet.

This is already happening. Researchers in 2016 could identify which bat was talking to which other bat, and what they were arguing about! This wasn’t with transformers. It was regular ML voice recognition.

This image displays a webpage excerpt titled "Bat chat" describing a study where researchers monitored 22 Egyptian fruit bats for 75 days, using voice recognition software to classify over 60% of their vocalizations into four social contexts: squabbling over food, jostling over sleeping position, protesting over mating, and arguing when perched close together.

A screenshot of a webpage with text about bat communication, including a "Download PDF" button at the top and two main sections: one discussing bat vocalizations and social interactions, and another titled "Cave quarrels" describing bats being vocal when annoyed.

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