Artificial Intelligence has become an indispensable part of our lives. We can find the use of AI everywhere. Every industry has started adopting AI for key business operations like sales, marketing, customer services, etc. What about the other goals of artificial intelligence? Can an AI program be used in biology to understand the animal kingdom? Have you ever wondered how it would feel if humans started communicating with animals and birds using their own languages? Understanding animal language is not easy. One would question, is there even something known as animal languages? One of the goals of artificial intelligence is to help humans understand animal languages.
Artificial Intelligence is getting better with languages. From spell checking emails and content to voice assistants like Alexa and Siri, the power of AI in understanding language is there for everyone to see. What about the goals of artificial intelligence when it comes to the language of animals?
Artificial Intelligence in isolating sounds and calls of animals from audio files
- AI and machine learning technologies can help analyze an animal audio file in only a few seconds.
- On the contrary, analyzing an animal audio file would require several hours.
- Manual isolation of animal calls from audio files is quite tedious and time-consuming as well.
DeepSqueak – An AI-powered deep learning system for detection and analysis of ultrasonic vocalizations
- DeepSqueak is a powerful AI program and software tool developed by researchers of Washington University.
- DeepSqueak is the result of the hard work of two researchers – Kevin Coffey and Russel Marx from the University of Washington.
- This software is capable of identifying, processing, and sorting squeaks of rat and mouse automatically.
- DeepSqueak, the AI program makes use of deep learning algorithms to automatically identify rodent calls from audio clips.
- The rodent calls are then compared to calls having similar characteristics.
- Even the patterns of squeaks are analyzed.
- Studying rodent calls is quite difficult since it involves ultrasonic sounds which the human ear can perceive.
- Even with the use of specialized microphones, identifying, tagging, and categorization of squeaks in the audio recording is quite tedious.
- In rodents, the high-pitched calls are often for a positive effect or negative effect depending on the situation.
- Detection and analysis of DeepSqueak’s technology is based on the waveforms in an audio file.
- The DeepSqueak AI program is able to identify any irregular patterns in the waves.
An AI-powered software to decode conversations between marmosets
- Marmosets are small New World monkeys that live in groups.
- A new artificial intelligence software that can decode the conversations between marmosets has been developed.
- The vocabulary of marmosets include 10-15 calls including trills, chirps, twitters, phees, and various peeps.
- Each marmoset call has its own meaning.
- Research indicates that marmosets have a human-like communication system, where baby marmosets learn to communicate by hearing other marmosets interact and talk to them.
- The AI program for decoding conversations between marmosets was developed by Samvaran Sharma, an engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – McGovern Institute, Cambridge, along with colleagues from Desimone’s laboratory at MIT.
- The AI-powered algorithm first translates the frequency patterns of marmoset calls into images.
- The images are then classified by the artificial neural network.
- To understand and learn the marmoset calls, the network first takes a bunch of similar calls, for example, a trill, and understands its pattern.
- The AI neural network then tries to figure out whether a new image is a trill or something else.
- The end result generated by the AI program is a group (string) of marmoset words which helps researchers understand what marmosets are talking to each other about.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) – Using machine learning technologies to identify various animal species in Coral reefs
- The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is dedicated to research in marine life, science, and engineering.
- They are making use of various machine learning technologies to identify various species on reefs.
- Each coral reef is home to hundreds of animal species.
- Underground microphones are being used to systematize different species present on the coral reefs.
- A single sensor is enough to cover almost an entire reef area.
- Commonly found animal species can be easily categorized.
- However, one of the most important goals of artificial intelligence is to identify unique and cryptic animals on the reefs.
- Scientists and researchers are working hard towards accomplishing the goal of artificial intelligence for identifying and classifying rare and endangered animal species found in coral reefs.
- It is essential that the goals of artificial intelligence towards identification and systematizing animal species be carried out soon as climate change can result in many species getting extinct.
Still a long way to go with artificial intelligence in learning about the language of animals
- The initial success of artificial intelligence does not mean that it will directly convert animal languages and sounds to English language which we can understand.
- There is still a long time to go before the goals of artificial intelligence in understanding the language of animals is completely turned into reality.
- Also, in order to understand the language of domestic animals like dogs and cats, there will be a need for a hybrid AI system, i.e. one that analyzes audio and video both.
- Domestic animals mainly communicate through body language, and their range of sounds is smaller (limited).
- Also, the behavior and communication techniques can be unified into a single system to get more clarity on animal languages.