2024 Interspecies Internet Workshop
Animals in Translation: Imagining Criteria and Frameworks for Decoding Communication in Other Species
Santa Fe Institute - Cowan Campus, Noyce Conference Room
Workshop
April 29, 2024 – April 30, 2024
Communication is ubiquitous in humans and other animals. However, how we perceive other animals is often linked to what we know about the type and complexity of information contained in their communication systems. Scientists are using advanced technologies to study animal communication and behavior, and although there have been important advances in the field of animal communication research, we simply have not yet found a rigorous means or demonstration of the ability to translate their systems of communication. Using AI machine learning and other mathematical approaches, coupled with ground truthing by scientists studying specific species, we are closer than ever to demonstrating the ability to decode functional communication in other species. There may be a multitude of ways to decipher the codes of other species and to demonstrate successful translations. So what might success look like?
Interspecies Internet (IO) & The Santa Fe Institute aim to advance this challenge and guide the global community towards such a breakthrough. The focus of the Workshop is to imagine, discuss and co-create robust yet flexible criteria that would constitute evidence for the successful decoding of communication systems of another species. Towards this goal, the meeting will bring together experts from the fields of animal communication, cognition, behavior, AI, philosophy, linguistics, and mathematics, including members of the SFI community and other thinkers. Developing such criteria will inspire and encourage the pursuit of the demonstration of such translations and we hope that this achievement will create a sea change in how animals are perceived and treated.
The proceedings of the workshop and outcomes will be documented and published digitally as an unprecedented advance for the field. In addition, we invite representatives of the XPrize Biodiversity + Conservation domain to further co-develop a prize concept for animal translation based on the criteria developed. Our outcomes for this workshop will contribute to the wider field of exobiology.
Program Overview
28th of April | Sunday
Arrival and Networking: Guests arrived at the SFI Tesuque campus and enjoyed food, drinks, and networking.
Welcome Remarks: Trustees, XPRIZE, and SFI representatives gave brief introductions and remarks.
29th of April | Monday
Breakfast
Event Opening: Opening remarks and insights from Interspecies Internet trustees and SFI President David Krakauer.
Presentations:
Con Slobodchikoff
Exploring Features of Communication: A Stroke of Genus
Yossi Yovel
From Cacophony to Order in Animal Communication
Jeff Reed
Cry Wolf Project at Yellowstone Park
Break
Presentations:
Brenda McCowan
Humpback Whales in Translation: Toward Decoding Communication and its Complexity in Non-Humans
Julien Meyer
How traditional extreme transformations of speech may help decoding animal communications
Gasper Begus
Intelligence for Discovery: Project CETI
Lunch Break
Presentations:
George Vengrovski
Deciphering Canary Song: A Deep Dive into Self-Supervised Learning with TweetyBERT
Laurance Doyle
Animal Communication, Information Theory, and SETI
Catherine Hobaiter
Reimagining the Study of Ape Communication
Break
Collective Discussion: The first day concluded with a collective discussion and Q&A session.
Wrap Up
Group Dinner: Guests enjoyed a group dinner hosted by XPRIZE at Paloma, a 5-minute walk from Hotel Santa Fe.
30th of April | Tuesday
Breakfast
Welcome and Overview: A welcome session with a schedule reminder, a brief overview of the previous day, and the goals for the day.
Morning Breakout Sessions:
1st Session: The Complexity of Communication: Assumptions and Barriers to Decoding
2nd Session: The Coupling of AI, The Human Eye, and Other Tools to Decode
Lunch Break
Afternoon Breakout Sessions:
3rd Session: Criteria for Decoding
Break
Collective Discussion: All ideas generated by the three groups were projected on the screen for review and evaluated based on suggested criteria for decoding.
Closing Remarks: The event concluded with closing remarks, expressions of thanks, and departures.
Below are the organizers, facilitators, and participants of the workshop.
Photos by Katie Mast, SFI
Organizers
Facilitators
Participants
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Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University
Brandon is a computational biologist whose research investigates complex problems in epidemiology, evolutionary & population genetics, and evolution. His work utilizes a range of methods, from experimental evolution, to biochemistry, applied mathematics, and evolutionary computation.
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Professor of Ethology and the Director of the McCowan-Vandeleest Laboratory of Biobehavioral Complexity | University of California
Brenda specializes in behavioral biology, animal behavior, and communication. With over 30 years of research, she studies complex social systems in macaques, the health effects of interactions, and uses machine learning to decode animal communication. Her work aims to enhance human and animal health through understanding behavioral biology and ecology.
Plenary Talk: Humpback Whales in Translation: Toward Decoding Communication and its Complexity in Non-Humans
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Professor in the Departments of Philosophy and Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Iowa, and a visiting academic at the University of Edinburgh
She works on theoretical and philosophical issues in comparative psychology and cognitive science, focusing on the phylogeny of cognition. Author of Pieces of Mind (Oxford, 2018), who has published extensively in leading journals, is the principal investigator on a Templeton World Charity Foundation grant studying referential signals in bonobos and dolphins.
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Reader at the University of St Andrews
Cat has spent 15 years studying primates in Africa, focusing on communication and cognition in wild African apes. Her work on gestural communication in wild apes aims to understand the evolutionary origins of language.
Plenary Talk: Reimagining the Study of Ape Communication -
Professor & Science Steering Committee at SFI
Chris is a scientist using mathematical and computational techniques, to explore phenomena ranging from major evolutionary life-history transitions to the biogeography of plant traits and the organization of bacterial communities, with a particular focus on biological architecture as a mediator between physiology and the environment.
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Professor Emeritus, Biology Department, Northern Arizona University
Con is an expert in animal language. His book, Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Language of Animals (St. Martin’s Press) showed that many animals have language and can talk. It is just that we don’t listen. Con’s goal is to help people listen to animals and understand that animals have much to tell us.
Plenary Talk: Exploring Features of Communication: A Stroke of Genus
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Professor & Science Board at SFI
Cristopher Moore is a professor at the Santa Fe Institute with expertise in physics, mathematics, and computer science. He has authored 160 interdisciplinary papers, co-authored "The Nature of Computation", and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Mathematical Society, and the AAAS.
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Founder and Project Lead at CETI
An interdisciplinary researcher that bridges animal communication, climate science, marine biology, microbiology, and molecular biology. His inventions include technology to perceive the underwater world (“shark-eye camera”) from the perspective of marine animals.
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President at Santa Fe Institute
David delves into the evolution of intelligence, while also contributing to various research groups and prestigious academic institutions worldwide.
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Professor at SFI
David holds positions at SFI, Complexity Science Hub Vienna, ASU, and ICTP in Trieste. An IEEE Fellow, he has authored three books, over 200 papers, and holds three patents. His research combines nonequilibrium statistical physics with computer science, and he developed the stacking technique in machine learning.
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Co-investigator with the Whale-SETI Study Team
Fred has been studying the social ecology of humpback whales in SE Alaska since 1987. He is a co-investigator with the Whale-SETI Study Team, using an astrobiological framework to explore whale communication as an analog for extraterrestrial intelligence, involving call classification, dynamic playbacks, and responses to whales' volitional signals.
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Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley; Linguistics Lead at Project CETI; Member of Berkeley's Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Gasper research focuses on understanding biological and artificial intelligence by developing realistic deep learning models of human language. He combines machine learning and statistical models with neuroimaging and behavioral experiments to better understand how deep neural networks learn internal representations and how humans learn to speak.
Plenary Talk: Intelligence for Discovery: Project CETI
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Computational neuroscience PhD student under the guidance of Dr. Tim Gardner
George, a computational neuroscience PhD student at the University of Oregon, developed TweetyBERT for classifying birdsong units. He aims to expand AI models to diverse animal species and integrate multi-modal communication analysis for research and conservation.
Plenary Talk: Deciphering Canary Song: A Deep Dive into Self-Supervised Learning with TweetyBERT
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SFI Trusttee; Chairman of Vistan Corporation; Director at Nanotronics Imaging
Gerry Ohrstrom, a private investor in New York City, has an extensive background in finance, private equity, and corporate governance. He has been involved in various family-owned companies and foundations, as well as nonprofit organizations focusing on scientific research, education, and public policy.
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Documentary Filmmaker
Grace McNally is a New York City based freelance documentary filmmaker. She has contributed to content that has appeared on National Geographic, PBS, Discovery Channel, History Channel, Comedy Central, HBO and Netflix in addition to producing her own independent projects.
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Adjunct Research Professor at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts.
Dr. Pepperberg focuses on the cognitive and communicative abilities of grey parrots, comparing them to other animals and young children. She was the first to establish two-way referential communication with parrots and has published over 170 works, including The Alex Studies and Alex & Me.
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Primatologist at Oxford University
Isabel is a field ethologist who studies animal behaviour to understand other animals, as well as to understand humans and our place in nature. Originally from Chile, she is a primatologist, a pioneer adventurer-scientist and the first South American in following great apes in the wild.
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Lead engineer of Yellowstone's Cry Wolf bioacoustics project
Jeff Reed studies wolf communication. With a PhD in computational linguistics and a 30-year career in industrial software, he develops sensor technology to understand animal behavior, particularly carnivores.
Plenary Talk: Cry Wolf Project at Yellowstone Park
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Faculty fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center | Harvard University
Writer, designer, and artist focused on the co-evolution of technology and society. Author of "The Social Machine" (MIT Press), she has published extensively on social media, AI, ethics, and anonymity. As the former director of MIT Media Lab's Sociable Media Group, she designed innovative online community interfaces.
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Researcher at the French National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS/Gipsa-Lab/Université Grenoble Alpes)
Julien specializes in ancient telecommunication systems, transforming speech and musical surrogacy of human languages, based on fieldwork and experimental studies in 15 populations worldwide. He also explores parallels between human and animal whistles.
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Technical Lead, Rainforest XPRIZE
Kevin, a military veteran and telecommunications engineer, co-founded the Forgotten Parks Foundation before joining XPRIZE. He has extensive experience in wildlife conservation, technical capabilities development, and working with leading-edge technologies.
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Leads the Whale-SETI Group at the SETI Institute
Since 1987, Dr. Doyle has been a Principal Investigator at the SETI Institute, focusing on photometric detection of extrasolar planets and applying information theory to animal communication.
Plenary Talk: Animal Communication, Information Theory, and SETI -
Founder & CEO of FluentPet
Leo is a blend of cognitive scientist and entrepreneur. His company combines community and scientific collaboration with carefully designed communication tools to help humanity realize the potential of the animals with whom we share this planet. He started CleverPet as a PhD candidate at UC San Diego.
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Director of the Wayback Machine at Internet Archive
An internet pioneer with extensive experience in technology and business leadership, currently leading initiatives to archive the public web and global TV news. He also directs projects in AI and various endeavors related to Wikipedia.
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Professor of Evolutionary Ethology at the Humboldt University Berlin and the Museum of Natural History; Research Associate of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama
Mirjam studies vocal communication, social behavior and cognition in free-living bats using an integrative approach that combines classic field observations with acoustic, genomic and neurogenetic analyses. She is passionately curious about animal culture, vocal learning, and complex social interactions in the wild.
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Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow at SFI
Pedro, a Purépecha biologist from Mexico ( (indigenous), research focuses on biological complexity, the evolution of language, science communication, and the inclusion of marginalized people in science.
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EVP, Biodiversity & Conservation XPrize
Peter is a tropical ecologist and conservation scientist leading over 50 expeditions in rainforests globally. His work has established protected areas and discovered new species. He combines conservation science with media, featuring on platforms like BBC and National Geographic.
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Professor and researcher at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Ramon studies human language, animal communication, and other biological systems, focusing on statistical patterns, particularly "linguistic laws." His research aims to develop a parsimonious yet predictive mathematical theory of language and communication. He pioneered the statistical study of syntactic dependencies, introducing baselines and the principle of dependency distance minimization.
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Senior Research Scientist at Earth Species Project (ESP)
With a background in behavioral ecology and electrical engineering, Sara specializes in acoustics, machine learning, animal communication, and soundscape ecology. Her work advances research and conservation, often collaborating with artists to create biologically inspired works and interactive sound installations.
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Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University
Stuart investigates the olfactory system to understand signaling and perception in the brain. He is dedicated to making science accessible to the public and has received prestigious awards for his work. Firestein has authored books on the workings of science and its successes, which have been translated into multiple languages.
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Psychologist and primatologist known for her work with bonobos (Kanzi and Panbanisha) studying their cognitive abilities using lexigrams and keyboards.
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American fiction writer; Miller Scholar in the Santa Fe Institute.
Award-winning science fiction writer has written numerous acclaimed works such as "Story of Your Life", which was the basis for the film Arrival. Chiang's unique storytelling style and exploration of philosophical questions have garnered him worldwide recognition.
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Director, Advancement Xprize
Terry is dedicated to ending global poverty, with initiatives in education, global health, and social enterprise in Africa and South America. His achievements include scaling a top-rated hotel, co-founding a school in Tanzania, and managed international development organizations.
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Member of the School of Zoology; Head of the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University.
Yossi Yovel studies animal behavior, focusing on navigation, sensing, and communication, blending biology with technology such as GPS sensors for tracking small animals. His pioneering work on bats' bio-sonar navigation in the field, coupled with MRI studies of bats' brains in the lab, has led to the establishment of Neuro-Ecology, integrating Neuroscience and Ecology.
Plenary Talk: From Cacophony to Order in Animal Communication
