Title: Could AI Unlock the Secrets of Animal Communication? | The Future With Hannah Fry
Author: Bloomberg Originals

Transcript:
there aren't many cities in the world
with Wilderness on their doorstep but
this is the African Savannah so five
Rhino big train bridge in the distance
and uh just in that direction there you
got the City Heights of
Nairobi as the human population has
grown wild animals have been forced to
share their spaces but while the
physical distance might have married
there remains a gap between their world
and ours it's a hippo or at least we
think there is oh there's another one
there we haven't exactly been able to
ask what they
think unbelievable and then the birds
here talking to each
[Music]
other today artificial intelligence is
helping scientists to explore the croaks
the chirps and the hounds that pass
between and across different
species revealing Communications of
Staggering
complexity I'm Professor Hannah fry
mathematician and
writer I want to know whether we can
decode the language of other species and
perhaps even speak to them with the
power of AI
[Music]
oh I can see a Waggy tail any story
about animal communication should surely
start with our closest Furry Friends how
you
doing look we're matching they might
make the best companions but our
conversations with them have always been
a bit one-sided
to show her the
house this is the thing that most people
are interested in this is his
board this is Cash Cash has quite the
social media following as he is able to
communicate via buttons Grandma friend
want how many do you think that he knows
there's maybe 130 but basically
everything over here if I press any of
these we're going to see quite a large a
large response the w k button is on this
side okay sure and if there was hasn't
learned how to spell yet no he has not
this visitor the board is designed with
social words like hello and goodbye at
one end and verbs nouns and places at
the
other and according to Christina she and
cash can use it to converse hey Bubba
can I ask you a question do you want a
bone
[Music]
yes
yes okay you want a BN oh you clever
doggy there you go swee but every dog
understands the word bone right what
would be more impressive is if cash
communicated not just what he wants but
how he feels okay so I asked him you
want to be brushed right now cuz he was
just hovering over this brush
he said no I'm
sad that didn't make sense to me so I
asked why are you sad and he said I'm
sick sick you're sick and he didn't seem
sick uh but we went over the couch we
cuddled and you're going to see him barf
right next to
me oh wow oh yeah sorry there is fine
[Music]
okay maybe we're doing a human
interpretation of this but but that is
like understanding your own internal
emotional state do you think that
actually the dogs have a much more
intelligent inner life than we give them
credit for he absolutely seems to care
about things I never had any idea about
the frequency with which my parents
visit very meaningful to him if they've
gone a couple days and they have not
visited him I start to a grandparent
requests while many of us want to
believe that we can have a meaningful
conversation with our parents
some researchers have doubts about what
the use of button boards really
shows it is not an exact science by any
means and I and we actually get a lot of
push back on that because people want it
to be very clear and very linear what I
will say without a doubt is that what's
Happening Here is communication and that
to me is very very
valuable so far little research has been
published but there is some evidence
that dogs can combine buttons together
to create new meanings Cash
Cash oh yeah you gorgeous boy and
regardless of the science Christina's
motivation is to build a better
relationship with her
dog I think cash and his relationship
with Christina super cute but I also
think that the jury is out on this about
whether this is just sophisticated
begging or a real form of communic ation
what's interesting is the language
because this is Cash learning English I
think if you're going to claim to have
really cracked animal communication I
think we also have to learn how to speak
dog and that is where artificial
intelligence comes
in the discovery of the Rosetta Stone
that was the key that unlocked Egyptian
hieroglyphs and the language of an
ancient
civilization unfortunately when it comes
to communicating with animals it's
unlikely that we're going to find
another one but there is some hope that
lies in an incredibly powerful piece of
AI architecture known as a Transformer
now Transformers are now ubiquitous they
are the engine that drives chatbots like
gp4 and they work by taking reams of
data text for instance and mapping it
into a multi-dimensional space a bit
like a galaxy of stars in this galaxy
each star represents a word but
crucially the distance and Direction
between the Stars encodes relational
meaning for example the geometric space
between Queen and woman will be the same
as Princess and girl this ability to
track relationships between words gives
Transformers their superpower it's what
helps them to make sense of things like
context and structure and Incredibly if
you map different languages from around
the world even ones as different as
English versus U they all form very
similar geometric shapes meaning if you
transpose one map over the other you can
seamlessly translate from one language
to another just like a Rosetta Stone
with the discovery of this hidden
mathematical structure scientists can
begin to venture into an alien world to
decode animal
communication and perhaps even to speak
back
[Music]
from birds to
bats frogs to Humpback
whales the complexity of animal sounds
is astonishing research shows Prairie
docks can describe what their predators
look like budgies use sounds akin to
consonants and vowels and with Decades
of data collected by scientists just
waiting for AI to decode it these kinds
of discoveries could be just the
beginning
[Music]
I mean this is an extraordinary building
yeah thank you this is AAR Raskin a
brain this is a a real a real human
brain a real real one yeah a real real
one he co-founded the Earth species
project a nonprofit that tries to decode
Communication in nonhuman
species we work with like 40 plus
institutions and like 800 biologists um
and they record as you see here like
video they record audio they record
motion how the animals move and so what
that lets us start to do is to translate
to and from all the different modalities
what does one whale say that causes
another whale to dive in terms of the
first step of that then like trying to
uncover existing patterns in the data
that you're collecting like do you see
that there's a particular noise that
whales make when another whale Dives
yeah yeah yeah um this uh these are a
couple Beluga communicating while
hunting go
on sounds like radio static right
or an alien modem yes an alien modem I
like that a lot yeah I mean that I could
listen to that for 100 years and never
make sense of it correct yeah and mind
scientists haven't been able to make
sense of it but we're at the cusp of
having the tools to learn how to like
disambiguate to like solve What's called
the cocktail party
problem the cocktail party problem is
the task of picking out a single voice
from the background of bus please could
you tell me where the nearest Tube
Station is I'm just not sure of the
directions AI has nearly solved it for
human voices but the progress for
Animals has been a little
slower even before you've started trying
to understand what an individual animal
is talking about in an individual
situation even collecting the data of a
single animal speaking is really hard
yeah and so you have to teach an AI what
does an individual animal sound like
what is the syntax and once it learns
that then it tries to do lots of
separations and it's like oh is this a
good separation so be able to translate
all of that data into meaning is what
enables us to start doing this kind of
work it's a little bit like chat GPT uh
but instead of for humans for for
animals so this first bit is the prompt
so this is what the bird sang and then
the AI continues it it's sort of like
autocomplete right for animal
communication predictive text exactly
right but but for birds so here we
go okay I didn't to my ear I wasn't
looking I didn't notice the point at
which it became fake and yet does the
bird notice you don't know yet like we
are right at that cusp of trying for the
very first time to have like AI animal
direct like
communication the capability to converse
with animals would be an almost magical
superpower but even if we could what
words from our human world would we even
say I think we should expect something
parts of our experience to be very
similar you know we all have mothers we
all need to eat and we should expect a
whole bunch to not be so if you're using
this full AI right and it's like doing
autocomplete and you have no idea what
it's saying is there concern that you
might I don't know like distress the
animal or or sort of put them in a
situation they don't need to be in yeah
one of the really scary things about
working on this technology is if we're
not careful and we just create a
synthetic whale and put it on the ocean
that starts to sing like we might mess
up a 34 milliony old wisdom
tradition humbag whales have the ability
to adopt other populations songs and can
broadcast them thousands of miles across
the ocean an AI whale could interfere
with that communication perhaps
affecting Behavior or navigation
[Music]
yeah eventually I think we're going to
need a kind of Geneva Convention for
cross species communication like this
technology is coming whether we build it
or somebody else in some sense it's
inevitable there is an assumption here
that the technology that works for
humans could be transported to work for
animals too but just because AI can
switch from ero to Spanish translating
from English to whale seems like a
different kind of problem altogether it
feels like there's something missing
here right you know when chat GPT was
trained with humans using it and
assessing how much sense it made how
good it was at replicating human
language like we we're kind of missing
the key translator who can go from one
language to the other I know that that's
the point I know that they're saying
that AI can be the Rosetta Stone but I'm
just I'm not sure that I'm convinced
that our worldview
and the things that we care enough about
to have language for are going to map
onto the things that are important to
animals
[Music]
enough these are elephant
seals for 3 months a year they lie
around on beaches while the females wait
for their newborn pups to be old enough
to swim so what does a colony of
elephant seals have to talk about in all
of that time oh my gosh the light the
morning so Beau when it comes down over
all of these Hill siid it's absolutely
beautiful biologist Caroline Casey has
spent over a decad studying these
creatures got a little bit of mountain
goat we go jeans and has begun to
discover what they have to say really
it's just about sitting here and waiting
you know I'll just like post up and kind
of watch to see what's happening on the
on the
colony right now it's mating season and
the seals approach to romance is
seemingly well
one-sided mostly adult females and then
each female for the most part has a
little pup with them and so typically
there's one alpha and his job is to meet
with as many females as possible before
they depart back to seat and that's when
things get really dynamic because
there's males waiting in the wing for is
that male over there
yeah rather than heading straight into
an energy draining and sometimes deadly
battle the competing males call out each
with a unique Rhythm and
tomra this is a real simple
call oh it's like sounds like someone
with a drum
yeah and then I love this one this one
is more complex so there's like a little
substructural components that hopefully
you can
hear oh this say on The Bongo
yeah through a series of playback
experiments Caroline discovered they
were essentially just saying their own
names they've got names exactly what
that they give each other or that they
give themselves they give themselves
essentially we don't know how we don't
know if they learn them or if they're
born with them what so they come in and
they're like Jim here
that's the only thing they say but you
need to be able to have experience with
Jim to know how to respond to them but
if Bob had beat you up a couple times
and you hear the word Bob all of a
sudden you have this association with
this negative thing that
happen in the world of male elephant
seals who only ever say their own name
it's not looking great for an AI Rosetta
Stone to communicate with them but that
doesn't mean that AI can't bring other
benefits
I would love to work with somebody who
specializes in AI to see what they would
find but I'm really driven by a specific
scientific question you know I'm taking
maybe a two-minute recording of this
mail I know exactly who he is I know the
context of the call that he's producing
so it's not just a case of like get the
data now we've got AI press the big like
AI button and and there you go talk to
animal I mean you you the main I'm sorry
I'm just so sidetracked by how
gigantically enormous that and now he's
was coming up and he's like you better
come into my her
oh is it possible though that maybe
there are things other than food and
space and mating that these seals are
talking about sure yeah absolutely yeah
yeah I mean I would be surprised just
cuz we've been studying them for so long
but of course maybe they love surfing
yeah of course we're looking at it
through our own human length and of
course there may be some subtle patterns
that we're missing so I think that
that's where AI can really comp
compliment but it's no substitute for
sitting on a JY I don't think so I think
that the the most elegant and profound
discoveries of animal behavior have come
from knowing individual animals and
watching them and tracking them and just
being
present I think the big thing about this
project is that it's all about listening
rather than communica necessarily it's
all about what these creatures are
saying to each
other and they're only intervening to be
sure that they've understood
it and it does make me wonder about this
idea of communication I mean here it's
one
way but is there is there ever going to
be a situation where talking to wild
animals is a good thing the potential
risks from human to animal communication
are far reaching whether it's causing
animals distress or unknowingly
impacting entire
ecosystems the stakes are high if the
goal of two-way communication is to
actually improve our relationship with
the natural
[Music]
world in Kenya a group of researchers
are trying to do just this this is our
headquarters in Nairobi in this
incredible building actually it's very
very old about 70 years old they have
harnessed the power of communication to
address the growing problem of human
elephant conflict in the hope that they
can prevent both sides from
[Music]
harm it all began after hearing
indigenous folklore that elephants are
terrified of
bees so here we are so this is a one of
the inspired Dr Lucy King hid a
loudspeaker near to a herd of rest ing
elephants and played the sound of a
disturbed Hive of African
bees the bee sound is coming from the
side can you see her face she's lifting
her head up her trunks curling around
ears are out and then you start to see
one female starts the retreat with her
head up tail out she's clearly alert and
she follows and then suddenly because
she starts running they all start
running away oh my goodness and you can
see them literally Galloping away from
what they think as bees coming to get
them but not only did they run away but
the elephants listening to bees head
shook as if there were bees in the air
and then they would also dust themselves
as if they were thinking there are bees
I need to knock them out of the air
because before this moment all you knew
was that they didn't like chilling out
under trees that had beehives in it but
this is like yeah the moment when it's
like no they really do not want to be
near the Beast
to better understand what was going on
Lucy used microphones to record low
frequency elephant rumbles in audible to
humans potentially there's like a ripple
of panic that goes through them
potentially there's some communication
going on there as well and what she
found was rather incredible you get back
to the lab there on the screen are just
ripples of rumbles coming through that
have been captured there's a very
specific shape to the the B Rumble and
if you played that shape of sound
through a very large speaker back to
unknowing elephants they would run away
headshake and dust no yeah so you
basically get the elephant word b yeah
play it to an elephant and they react as
though they're bees yes and that was the
absolute Eureka
[Music]
moment decoding this hidden
communication inspired a way to keep
elephants and humans away from
conflict enter the Beehive fence hives
or identical dummy hives are hung along
a wire to create a border around Farmers
crops if an elephant disturbs the wire
the fence releases a swarm of angry bees
sending the elephants on their
way it's a deceptively simple solution
and just the beginning of scientific
research that could provide conservation
at a wider
level our interpretation of this we are
passionately interested in the animal
itself but then the reality is to help
us save them because they're all under
such threat and I guess understanding
that comes through language Perhaps
Perhaps you know perhaps the language
might give us an insight into how they
are reacting to each other we played B
sounds to certain elephants and then we
played the sound of samburu Warriors to
another group of elephants they don't
hedake they don't dust they actually run
so they Rumble but they don't make a
huge load of noise because they want to
be quiet so like a word for scary human
yes and the question is is it scary
human or is it scary samuru so the
threat level is different and the
elephants respond differently to the
threat levels yeah this is the the level
of complexity that we're teasing apart
now with the with the science that we
can
do as AI develops it will provide
researchers with new ways to tune into
the animal kingdom
goals that once seemed Fantastical could
be closer than
ever and while a meaningful conversation
with an elephant might never come to
pass none of it will matter unless we
are willing to properly engage and
appreciate the other species on this
planet honestly I'm a little bit
skeptical about how far it's going to
take us because if we do manage to get
to this future where we can fully
communicate with animals
I'm not sure that humans are going to be
that good at listening
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]