"Today, tools like drones, digital recorders and artificial intelligence are helping us hear the sounds of nature in unprecedented ways," writes Vox, citing Karen Bakker, author of the new book Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants.
But how far can we go?
Automated listening devices exist in ecosystems across the planet, from rainforests to deep oceans, and miniaturization allows scientists to attach microphones to animals as small as bees.
"Together, these digital devices act like a hearing aid on a planetary scale: enabling people to observe and study the sounds of nature beyond the limits of our sensory capabilities," writes Bakker.
All these devices create too much data, και οι ερευνητές στους τομείς της βιοακουστικής (η οποία μελετά τους ήχους που παράγονται από ζωντανούς οργανισμούς) και της οικοακουστικής (η οποία μελετά τους ήχους που παράγονται από ολόκληρα οικοσυστήματα) στρέφονται στην τεχνητή νοημοσύνη για να αναζητήσουν μέσα από τους σωρούς των ηχογραφήσεων, μοτίβα που θα μπορούσαν να μας βοηθήσουν να καταλάβουμε τι λένε τα ζώα μεταξύ τους. Σήμερα υπάρχουν βάσεις δεδομένων με songwhales and bee dances, among others, Bakker says, and could one day become "a zoological version of Google Translate."
In an interview with Vox, the author states that already “We can use AI-enabled robots to speak the languages of animals and essentially break the barrier of communication between species. Researchers do this in a very rudimentary way with bees, dolphins and in some cases with elephants.
"But this raises a very serious moral question..."
An example.
A research group in Germany coded the signalthose of the bees with a robot that he placed in a hive. This robot is able to use bee dance communication to tell bees to stop moving and is able to tell those bees where to fly for a specific nectar source.
The next stage of this research is to implant these robots into bee hives so that the hives accept these robots as members of their community from birth.
So then we would have an unprecedented degree of control over the hive. We will essentially have tamed this hive in a way that we have never done before.
This creates the potential for animals to be exploited and there is a long history of military use of animals….
