NEWS ~ This AI communicates with bees, and that worries scientists
Artificial intelligences dedicated to understanding and learning the language of animals and insects are improving and could make it possible to break the communication barrier between species. A feat that raises unavoidable and thorny ethical issues.
Vocabulary, syntax, art of conversation... Researchers have been working for a long time on the richness and complexity of animal communication. All species are involved, including pigs, crows, cats and dogs, mice and monkeys, and even bees.
The dances that these insects perform constitute a real language that allows them to coordinate their tasks. This phenomenon has been studied since the 1940s and today, artificial intelligence allows us to go much further than the interpretation of this language.
So, back in 2018, researchers at the Dahlem Center for Machine Learning and Robotics in Germany designed the RoboBee, a micro-robot that can mimic the wriggling dance of bees. The robot is a simple piece of sponge with wings that moves on a rod among other bees. It's an AI that's in charge and it works, as some of the bees in the hive "listened" to it. The bees followed the RoboBee's instructions precisely. For this team, the next step is to manage to domesticate an entire hive. To do this, the researchers are implanting several robots in different hives to see if the colony accepts them as one of its own.
Handling wildlife:
The interesting thing about AI is that it can analyze unique signals, related to behaviors and patterns, to create a language rather than trying to teach them ours. This is mission impossible without its power. This is the opposite of the approach that has been taken with primates for the last 60 years. The language was then very human-centered. But being able to communicate with the language of bees and other animals is a goal that disturbs and even worries researcher Karen Bakker of the University of British Columbia in Canada.
Interviewed by Vox, she explains that the risk is that these AIs will be used by humans to exploit animals and insects rather than to truly understand them. Crossing the barrier of communication between species with the help of algorithms does have the potential to create a deeper sense of kinship. In other words, according to the scientist, anthropomorphism could lead humans to manipulate wild species to domesticate them in unnatural ways. She adds that this does not only concern bees, but all wild animals. Even the largest of mammals are concerned, such as elephants or sperm whales whose movements, behaviors and sounds are collected and analyzed by powerful AIs.
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