Should We Use AI to Communicate with Animals?

Researchers managed to finally communicate with a whale. Now, other professionals are claiming that AI could lead us to fully understanding the whale “language.” This begs many questions about whether or not AI communication should be used in cross-species communications.

by third year Brantley Jenkins

Recently, researchers from the SETI institute, UCDavis, and the Alaska Whale Foundation had a 20 minute “conversation” with a whale. During their conversation, Twain, the whale, responded to recorded whale calls from a speaker on a boat. Despite this historic moment of human-whale communication, we still have no clue what was said.

Scientists have been trying to uncover the language of whales for quite awhile, but we still know very little. What we do know is that each species has unique vocalizations and even regional “dialects” within species. They use these vocalizations as self identification and location, but we really don’t know what means what. Even in their conversation with Twain, scientists don’t know what was being communicated, but they do know that Twain was responding to their recordings based on her response times. Twain even swam up to the boat and circled it while communicating, so she is aware that she was not talking to another whale.

All this being said, some scientists believe that AI could provide us a mechanism to unlock the secrets of the whale language. Using AI, scientists believe they can speak to whales as an AI interface translates our language into the language of whales.

This, however, begs the question of whether or not we should rely on AI to communicate with whales and even other species.

With the growing prevalence of AI in modern society, it is becoming a possibility that we could communicate with animals through use of AI. Should we be trying to communicate across species? And if so, should we be relying on AI as our method of communication?

It is certainly not an easy question. Ethicists are cautioning against communicating with whales, regardless of whether or not AI tools are used. They argue that we should leave whales alone on an ethical basis because we’ve already caused so much harm to the whales, like hunting the Atlantic Gray Whale to extinction. I believe these concerns would apply to many other species as well. However, wouldn't it be amazing to talk to your pets? As opposed to the integration of AI as I am, the prospect of knowing what’s going on in my cats’ minds is incredibly appealing.

Despite my excitement at talking to my cats, I don’t agree with a reliance on AI to talk to my pets. Ethically speaking, if we communicate with another species it should be through mutual words and understanding, not a third machine’s. If I learn to talk to my cats, I would want it to be through my own ability, not through reliance on an AI translator to do it for me. This same concern applies to whales. If we do crack the code on whale communication, it should be by our own understanding, not by the translation of AI.

But there’s a certain gray area here. What do you think? Should we let AI guide us to communicating with animals, or are the ethical concerns too great?