Listening to the Living World: Can AI help us hear the planet?
Outrage + Optimism: The Climate Podcast
Persephonica
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 28 August 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What if we could not only listen to the rest of nature, but actually understand it?
From decoding whale songs to giving nature a legal voice, the possibilities are tantalising - and they may not be as far-fetched as they sound. That’s why the Earth Species Project (ESP) is racing to use artificial intelligence to translate the communication of other species before they fall silent.
How can this cutting edge technology analyse data that would take human researchers a lifetime? And how might findings feed into emerging ideas about ecocentric governance and earth law? We hear from ESP’s Aza Raskin (Co-founder), Jane Lawton (Managing Director) and Olivier Pietquin (Chief Scientist) about this extraordinary mission, and the tools they’re using to achieve the previously unimaginable.
Plus, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac, and Paul Dickinson explore the promises and pitfalls of AI: its energy demands, its unpredictable impacts on democracy and capitalism, and its potential to become a ‘Galileo moment’ in how humans relate to the living world.
This episode features recordings of animal species - some of which were used in the training of ESP’s NatureLM-Audio model.
Learn more
🔊 Discover more about ESP’s large audio model, NatureLM-Audio, and the technology driving their work
📖 Read Aldo Leopold’s A Sound County Almanac, including the essay Thinking Like a Mountain
🐋 Read about about the story of Tokitae the orca calf
🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe
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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Video Producer: Caitlin Hanrahan
Assistant Producer: Caillin McDaid
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
Commissioning Editor: Sarah Thomas
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Riffick Karnak. I'm Christiana Figuera. |
| 0:06.0 | And I'm Paul Dickinson. This week, from decoding whale songs to giving nature a legal voice, |
| 0:10.7 | we dive into the Earth Species Project and the AI researchers racing to translate the languages of the living world before they may fall silent. |
| 0:19.6 | Thanks for being here. Okay, friends, we have a fantastic episode for you this week. |
| 0:24.6 | If you've ever wondered whether or not we're ever going to be able to speak to animals and |
| 0:27.6 | understand the natural world, this is the one for you and the incredible progress. |
| 0:31.6 | Wait, wait, wait, wait. |
| 0:33.6 | It's not quite speaking to animals yet. |
| 0:35.6 | It's understanding what animals are communicating first. Okay, well, I was imagining it Dr. Doolittle style, like, you know, talking to the animals. But that's not quite correct. Is that right? No, that is, I would argue, a very anthropocentric view. Well, it may not be the first time I'm accused of being anthroposentric on this podcast, but let's see. You are an anthropode. Now, we're going to get into this, but just before we do, I think we're going to do many episodes about AI. This is obviously a topic that is capturing the world's imagination is changing so much. And we have had many questions about AI as well. So let's just start with one of those. Hi there. My name is Sam and I work for a housing advocacy organization. |
| 1:15.6 | And I've been doing research into the electricity grid in Pennsylvania. |
| 1:22.6 | And I've learned about the pressure that AI data centers are putting on our grid. |
| 1:31.1 | And I feel very cynical about AI, but I also have seen, you know, Ember, which is a think tank, |
| 1:38.8 | on the climate transition, be quite optimistic and excited about AI. And I'm curious if AI has a place in |
| 1:49.8 | climate advocacy and a better future. So, I mean, I think to be honest, we're not going to be |
| 1:55.8 | able to answer these questions in full this week, because we're going to talk about other |
| 1:58.8 | things as well. But we will keep coming back to them. But this is a very live issue. I actually have a child in my house that is |
| 2:04.9 | boycotting AI because of the climate impacts, and I constantly get heat every time I use |
| 2:10.3 | chat GPT or something similar, because I'm told that I'm not really authentic in what I'm doing |
| 2:15.0 | because I'm using this terrible polluting technology while |
| 2:18.7 | trying to do something about climate change. How would you both answer that charge? |
| 2:22.3 | Well, first of all, one of the major accusations of climate conscious people is that data centers |
| 2:31.8 | use a lot of electricity. |
... |
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