Science News reports that artificial intelligence could help us talk to animals:
Sperm whales have families and other important social relationships. They also use loud clicking sounds to communicate. It seems as if they might be talking to each other..
From the air, drones record video and sounds. Soft, fishlike robots do the same underwater. Suction-cup tags on the whales capture even more data. But just collecting all these data isn’t enough. The team needs some way to make sense of it all. That’s where artificial intelligence, or AI, comes in.
A type of AI known as machine learning can sift through vast amounts of data to find patterns. Thanks to machine learning, you can open an app and use it to help you talk to someone who speaks Japanese or French or Hindi. One day, the same tech might translate sperm-whale clicks….
Researchers have trained AI models to sort through the sounds of prairie dogs, dolphins, naked mole rats and many other creatures. Could their efforts crack the codes of animal communication?… Long before AI came into the picture, scientists and others have worked toward understanding animal communication. Some learned that Vervet monkeys have different calls when warning of leopards versus eagles or pythons…hyenas spread scents to share information and …. bees communicate through dance…
Con Slobodchikoff studied prairie dog communication for more than 30 years. A biologist based near Flagstaff, Ariz., his work turned up many surprising language-like features in the rodents’ alarm calls…. Like Vervet monkeys, these animals call out to identify different threats. They have unique “words” for people, hawks, coyotes and pet dogs.
But that’s not all they talk about. Their call for a predator also includes information about size, shape and color, Slobodchikoff’s research has shown.
In one 2009 experiment with a colony of Gunnison’s prairie dogs, three women of similar sizes took turns walking through a prairie dog colony. Their outfits were identical except that each time they walked through, they wore either a green, blue or yellow T-shirt. Each woman passed through about 30 times. Meanwhile, an observer recorded the first alarm call a prairie dog made in response to the intruder.
All the calls fit a general pattern for “human.” However, shoutouts about people in blue shirts shared certain features. The calls for yellow or green shirts shared different features. This makes sense, because prairie dogs can see differences between blue and yellow but can’t see green as a distinct color.
Artificial intelligence is also building highly-effective antibodies to fight disease. And in Hungary, doctors are using artificial intelligence to detect cases of breast cancer more effectively, enabling them to remove such cancers before they can metastasize and kill women.
Robotics is fueling other life-saving innovations. Doctors recently did the first robotic liver transplant in America. Robots can fit in small spaces in people’s bodies that a surgeon can’t reach without cutting through living tissue, or doing other collateral damage.
The fact that new technologies are already saving lives in other countries does not mean they can immediately be used to save lives in America. FDA employees commonly take years to approve life-saving drugs and medical devices.The FDA didn’t approve a home test for HIV until 24 years after it first received an application. An FDA advisory committee noted that the test “holds the potential to prevent the transmission of more than 4,000 new HIV infections in its first year of use alone.” That means thousands of people got infected with AIDS as a result of the delay in approving it. As Fortune noted, the FDA’s delay in approving the home HIV test was a “scandal.” Similarly, at least a hundred thousand people died waiting for the FDA to approve beta blockers.
Jake Selliger recently described how he is “dying of squamous cell carcinoma, and the treatments that might save [him] are just out of reach,” due to the FDA, which routinely takes many years to approve life-saving medical treatments. “The FDA is responsible for more deaths on an annual basis than any other government agency. [Selliger is] one of its victims,” notes Paul Matzko of the Cato Institute. Researchers are “curing multiple cancers right now,” yet “the FDA is acting like it’s business as usual” and dragging its feet on approving cures.
