Can AI help us communicate with animals?

[MarlinCatch3]

My prediction is a resound yes. I read about human-animal relationships here and often see the word “intuition” used where the word “language” should be used.Paraphrasing: “My dog has an intuitive sense of my needs and moods. We’ve bonded over time and when I am ready to relax he senses the mood I am in”.

Here’s my hypothesis: Your dog isn’t using intuition, he is using language. Facial expressions, movements, clothing, scents, tone of voice are all language. Did I mention facial expressions? Your dog is reading cues from your facial expression and sending cues back to you, We aren’t able to understand these cues and facial expressions because we evolved the capacity to form speech sounds and lost our ability to communicate visually. However I cant think of any reason why a LLM cant be trained off facial expressions in a multi-modal training set.

Enter the dog translator personal assistant that will be in your glasses and when you look at your dog it will say: your dog would like to go out for a short walk, sniff the flowers and then have a belly rub. Or alternatively Your facial expression is signaling to your dog that you are stressed and he’d like to lick you before your walk tonight.

 

[DuskLuck]

I definitely feel like it will allow us to better understand what our animal companions are trying to communicate based off of pattern recognition, but I don't think it'll ever allow more direct translation between animals and humans the same way human languages can be translated to other human languages.

I very much hope I'm wrong though! It would be absolutely amazing to be able to have a conversation with my animals!

 

[MarlinCatch3]

The conversations will be limited perhaps by an emotive vocabulary. I imagine fear, safety, anxiety, hunger, happiness, sexual needs should be communicable.

 

[DuskLuck]

The conversations will be limited perhaps by an emotive vocabulary. I imagine fear, safety, anxiety, hunger, happiness, sexual needs should be communicable.

Without a doubt! The more basic feelings can be communicated very easily! Especially considering most people can ALREADY pick up on the feelings of certain animals without verbal communication!

I just don't think we will ever be able to have more nuanced/topical conversations with animals, no matter how good our technology gets.