Can AI help you talk to animalsđ?!
Todayâs edition explores a fun topic that Iâve been excited about. My TEDx talk last year was about ârecognizingâ animals. Wouldnât it be cool if we can âunderstandâ them too?
This newsletter will take you about 3 minutes to read.
Spotlight: Can AI help you talk to animalsđ?!
I was thrilled to visit the WW II museum in Bonn, Germany, but my excitement was short-lived. I stood there staring at the signs, many of which were in German.
This was 2015 and an early version of Google Translate came to my rescue. Pointing my camera at signs, I got their live English translation. This was mind-blowing!
Fast-forward to today and the technology has gotten a lot better. There are inexpensive apps that let you communicate live with people, across languages.
Wouldnât it be nice if we could do the same thing with animals? (video below đ):
This video was part of Googleâs legendary April fool pranks! Yet, this is not entirely fiction.
Decoding animals with AI
AI is revolutionizing our understanding of animals. Today, computer vision helps us recognize not just the broad species, but also identify individual animals!
Research in bioacoustics can help detect animal calls and sounds of birds. Up next is the translation of these calls into a language we understand.
If we think about it, pet owners can intimately understand an animalâs verbal and visual cues. Almost like their children. Can we decode the language more clearly?
Representing languages using algorithms
The breakthroughs we have seen with human language processing in the past decade give us hope. A technique called âword embeddingâ lets algorithms represent words and the relationship between them in the form of numbers.
The incredible thing here is that algorithms can do this without understanding anything about the language.
Now, what if we feed animal calls to such algorithms, instead of English words. This is exactly the approach taken by the Earth Species project.
It is complex, but not impossible. Can we expect it in the next 10 years, or 20?đ¤
If we can talk to animals, we might empathize with them and perhaps even treat them better. And yes, we can ask them some quirky questions, face-to-face. (video below đ)?
Industry Roundup
1. Article: How to spot your best AI opportunities, in 2 simple steps
6 minutes | Forbes | Bernard Marr
Rushing in to adopt AI can do more harm than good for your business. This article lays out a clear path on how you can adopt AI and tailor it to your organization.
->Â Read the Article
2. Video: Face-swapping selfies with AI
3 minutes | CtrlShiftFace
Reface is a new, popular app that uses Deepfake technology (or synthesized media) to swap faces from your selfie onto popular videos. Yes, itâs a controversial space, but users seem to be having fun. Hereâs an (old) spooky, viral video that shows its power.
->Â Watch the Video
3. Article: Why a less-than-perfect AI might be your best choice
5 minutes | FastCompany | Katharine Miller
How do you motivate people when part of their job is done by AI? A Stanford economics professor argues that you might want to âdumb-downâ AI if it will help improve human involvement and the quality of your decisions.
->Â Read the Article
My Updates:
5 books to peak productivity: The past few months, Iâve been building new habits. In this Enterprisers Project article, I shared my book recommendation.
Nasscomâs WWRT program: Tech has a diversity problem. Iâm happy to continue my 2nd year of mentoring women tech leaders in AI.
Video on data-driven culture: My newsletter last week talked about why org culture is the biggest roadblock for analytics. This video shows how to change that.
Hope you had fun reading this edition. Have any comments? Let me know.
Yours,
Ganes.
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