One of my 2023 resolutions was to send loved ones greeting cards. It’s November, and I would give myself a C+ grade on this resolution. Sadly, this is the best performance of all my resolutions.

As much as I enjoy putting pen to paper and writing something special for my loved ones, I regularly faced writer’s block and defaulted to standard greetings. I was pleased to come across this sweet little AI tool to help craft joyful greetings.

This app is straightforward and visual. The user simply makes a couple of selections to generate the greeting:

Magic Type AI is a free tool and the company does not share personal information with third parties except as required by law or to protect their rights.

Well, kind of. AI technology is enabling researchers to decode and interpret the vocalizations and behaviors of various animal species. You can read about it in the Scientific American Journal here.

There is a lot of nuance to the implications of humans being able to comprehend and communicate with animals in their native methods. My immediate thought: I don’t need to hear yet another creature in my house complaining about what’s for dinner.

That being said, there is an animal I would love to communicate with. She’s an Ammi, the subject of an award-winning documentary, and she happens to be an octopus. I will borrow from Reba McEntire’s hit song ‘I’m a Survivor’ to provide a very apt description of this extraordinary octo-Ammi:

“A single mom who works two jobs, who loves her kids, and never stops. With gentle [tentacles] and the heart of a fighter, [she’s] a survivor.”

I highly recommend watching ‘My Octopus Teacher’ to behold her greatness.

Human-animal communication could be amazing; we could learn so much. But first, let’s dig a little deeper.

Using technology to hear nature, called digital bioacoustics, relies on super tiny mics placed in locations from the Arctic to the Amazon, recording 24/7.

This generates a huge amount of data that AI models can process. The same AI models used in tools like Google Translate can find patterns in nonhuman communication.

Fair, seeing is bee-lieving. Let’s talk about honey-bee communication. Bees use a combination of body movements and sound to communicate with each other. Researcher Tim Landgraf used AI to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ bee communications, and its impact on other bees, ultimately decoding bee signals.

Landgraf programmed these signals into a robotic bee, RoboBee. He introduced RoboBee into a bee colony to perform a “waggle dance” that communicates the location of food. And sometimes, it kind of worked.

You can find the research paper on the dancing RoboBee here.

It’s difficult to know, of course. In the case of the RoboBee, researchers are well-intentioned; they want to communicate with declining bee populations to share where it's safe to find food and shelter.

However, like with any technology, the results can be disastrous when in the wrong hands. As a species that's already done quite a number on planet Earth, we can't afford any additional missteps with the animal community. So, in the case of interspecies communication, the key is probably for humans to do less talking and a lot more listening.

Astro or Ast-no?

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Astro - 43%

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Ast-no - 57%