Artificial intelligence and machine learning might one day point the way to translate dog-speak beyond their bark, NBC News reported.
According to the news outlet, scientists are learning how to translate animals' vocalizations and facial expressions into something we can understand — and taking note of the research, an Amazon-sponsored report on future trends in 10 years, we will have a translator for pets.
Among the research is that of Con Slobodchikoff, a professor emeritus of biology at Northern Arizona University, who believes prairie dogs have a sophisticated form of vocal communication that essentially is language.
And with help from a computer scientist colleague, he developed an algorithm that turns the vocalizations into English, NBC News reported.
"I thought, if we can do this with prairie dogs, we can certainly do it with dogs and cats," Slobodchikoff said, NBC News reported.
Similarly, A.I. technology could make things easier for farmers and ranchers — for instance, by identifying sick animals by detecting signs of pain in their faces, NBC News reported.
"Farmers find it difficult to recognize pain in the sheep,"Krista McLennan, a lecturer in animal behavior at the University of Chester in England, told NBC News.
She has developed a scale for estimating pain levels based on the animals' facial expressions.
Peter Robinson, a University of Cambridge professor who has developed computer systems that read human facial expressions, turned McLennan's scale into an A.I. algorithm. When the computer running the algorithm was shown hundreds of photos of sheep — some healthy and some not — it learned to tell which animals were in pain.
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