Can AI help us speak to animals? Part two
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2023
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A hardware revolution in recording devices and a software revolution in artificial intelligence has convinced some scientists that humans will eventually be able to ‘translate’ animal and even plant sounds into human language. But what would be the consequences of humans learning to ‘speak whale’, chat with bats or converse with elephants? The FT’s innovation editor John Thornhill and producer Persis Love explore the ethics of potential human-to-animal communication.
Presented by John Thornhill, produced by Persis Love, sound design by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s head of audio.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The FT News Briefing is supported by Equinole, the UK's energy partner. |
| 0:06.2 | Learn more at equinole.co.uk |
| 0:12.4 | Yossi Ovel is a scientist in Israel. |
| 0:15.2 | He studies bat communication. |
| 0:17.5 | And yeah, just one more comment. |
| 0:20.0 | The cave itself, you know, it saved no problem, |
| 0:23.3 | but there are a lot of corpuches, you'll see it's not... |
| 0:25.5 | Okay, guys, isn't it? |
| 0:26.8 | So don't take panic. |
| 0:28.3 | He took up producer Persis love to a bat cave outside Tel Aviv. |
| 0:48.8 | We drove to the cave where he catches these bats that he uses in experiments. |
| 0:53.1 | We park up in the suburbs of Tel Aviv and clamber down |
| 0:57.2 | this steep slope, which is covered in all this like tall, dry grass that goes over my head. |
| 1:04.9 | We come out in this little clearing by the entrance of the cave. |
| 1:12.6 | And we're right by the highway, so there's cars washing past. |
| 1:17.2 | We dump our stuff and Yossi has brought this big net with him, so he picks up the net. |
| 1:22.9 | And the two of us head inside. |
| 1:33.0 | It was kind of like stepping into this big hot, smelly breath. |
| 1:39.0 | And there's this big loose pile of dirt, which I think was mainly made up of back poo, |
| 1:44.2 | crawling with cockroaches. |
| 1:46.1 | I was kind of scrambling around in the dark, trying not to fall over while I was recording. |
| 1:51.1 | And Yossi was right at the back of the cave with his head torched on. |
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