Now this is a niche C/ :)
Also, I would just hope for the ability to better understand any given animal’s state of being. Trying to read body language and vocalizations is so damn difficult even with a single species. If there’s a way to reliably do that for something like dogs or cats, and that’s at far as it ever goes, that would be huge. Just think of the veterinary applications for it. Being more certain that an individual animal is stressed because of territorial issues vs pain, as an example.
That’s what I always assumed any realistic end result of “speaking animal” would cap out as.
I say more certain because even someone that’s extremely well versed with a species’ mannerisms can’t ever be fully certain because there are some individual variances. And it’s entirely possible to miss subtle indications of state of being when the more dramatic ones are in play. Anyone claiming perfection on their animal speak is full of shit. Well maybe wig something like a sloth, where they move so damn slow, but I’d doubt even they can be 100%.
But it is possible with enough experience to reach reasonable certainty, so the hope wood be to push that degree of certainty as high as possible, and make it take less expertise.
I agree, just being more certain of their inner worlds and how they are feeling would be huge. I really think we are headed in that direction as well. The ability for many animals to make controlled enough sounds may be a pretty limiting factor of their ability to share their inner worlds in much detail, so maybe some sort of eeg technology or some other way to bridge the gap with animal computer interfaces may be key for greater interspecies communication in some cases. There are, however, some animals that are capable of making sounds that can potentially hold a large amount of data, such as Sperm Whales or Bottlenose Dolphins, so maybe for them a simple translator may suffice for some pretty interesting exchanges. Although, it is possible that body language, positioning, or things we haven’t thought of that play large roles in the meanings of their sounds.
Yes, it is quite a niche field! I suspect it will be less niche in the not too distant future, it is one of many fields that is experiencing a transformation from relatively recent machine learning advancements. The more data that can be collected, the greater chance we have of AI offering up new insights. I am certainly excited to watch as things progress, I’ve been repeatedly mind-blown since I’ve been paying attention to it.
Instead I think we need to shift perspective from what we consider as communication, and have to admit that the human (conscious) focus on uttered sounds and (unconscious) focus on body language is by far not the only or the standard way of communication.
And maybe we have to come to terms with the fact that interspecies communication is not communication in general and very different from in-species communication.
So basically re-frame our human-centric understanding about communication.
No, I want to be able to have an argument with my dog because I was out for half an hour longer than I originally said.
This may not be completely outside of the realm of possibility. Here is a short clip of a leading prairie dog communication expert talking about the potential of pet-humam communication.
Yes! This is so huge! And one of the super exciting aspects of all this. Our framework for what communication and language can be is almost entirely based on human communication. Getting an understanding of what an entirely different complex communication system could be would be fascinating.
