What if we can talk to animals in the future? It is not as crazy as you think. Read on it will make sense

What could a Google Translate for the animal kingdom spawn? Raskin is the co-founder and president of Earth Species Project (ESP), its mission is to decode non-human communication using a form of artificial intelligence (AI).

One cannot foresee the future possibilities unless you look back. Let's start from the beginning.

Humans understand universe better than any other species, why? Technology.

Talking: Communicating in a common language with fellow humans was the foundational technology underpinning our progress.

Writing: Enormous leap that allowed humans to communicate longitudinally across time dimension, cannot be easily falsified or misrepresented.

Talking and writing connected fellow humans - primitive form of distributed computing, it harnessed humans biological computing capability to record observation.

Our ancestors invented wheels, boats to communicate with fellow humans across continents . Rapid progress followed.

Our ancestors across cultures believed demons or snakes or dragons ate sun or moon during eclipse, they prayed and sacrificed to appease.

Later, oral stories and written record enabled them to identify the pattern, predict eclipse and imagine solar system without even leaving planet earth. Belief started eroding.

Then came the inflection point, Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel predicted in 1965 that computing capabilities will double every two years but cost will reduce by 50% (Moore's law).

Moore's laws has enabled exponential progress, last 100 year has seen more progress than previous 5000 years.

you think that is an exaggeration? Apollo 11 mission that took Neil Armstrong to the moon had 4KB of RAM and 32KB of Hard disk, weighed about 30 kg.

Your smart phone has at least 100,000 times more processing power, your selfie will consume 2000 times more space than the entire Apollo 11 mission that took the man to the moon 50 years ago.

It is no surprise that we are using AI and machines learning to decode animal vocalisation and sign language to communicate and further our understanding of the universe.

Animals can sense tsunami's and earth quake way before humans.

Most sea turtles return to same beach where they born to nest by travelling 3500 km's, why and how do they navigate?

Artic terns migrate from Artic summer to Antarctic summer, 22,000 miles each year to maximize day light, why and how do they navigate?

Imagine communicating with the Dolphins and Whales to clean up plastics in the ocean, animals warning about global warming in UN and fighting for veto rights.

There are so many possibilities.

After all, belief begins at the edge of computing but we will always be at the beginning of infinity.

Reference: The Guardian: Can artificial intelligence really help us talk to the animals?

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