Machine learning is driving rapid progress in “decoding” animal communication – with the potential to radically transform our relationships towards animals. This session explores the ethical and legal implications of such breakthroughs. Should we talk to animals at all, and if so, what ethical considerations should guide our interactions? Which animals are we giving voice to? How might our world change if breakthroughs allowed us to understand animals on their own terms? Are there limits to how much we can understand one another? And perhaps most importantly: Are we ready to listen?

🧩 Central questions

The ethics of contact: Just because we can talk to animals, should we? If so, what ethical considerations might govern how we communicate with them?
Which animals are we giving voice to? How does our relationship with an animal – as a companion, a commodity, or a wild being – shape the ethics of communicating with them? Could advances in interspecies communication benefit some types of animals but not others?
The ethics of listening: How might our moral and legal obligations towards animals change if we could truly understand them? Does an animal's capacity for complex communication change what we owe them, or does it simply make it harder to ignore the duties we already have?
Societal transformation: How would our legal systems and moral codes need to evolve in a world where we could truly understand what animals think and feel? What are the most plausible positive and negative outcomes that could result from complex interspecies communication?

🧭 Learning objectives

Understand: Explain how machine learning is accelerating research into animal communication.
Assess: Anticipate how human society might adapt to advances in interspecies communication, and identify positive and negative outcomes for animals, including backfire risks.
Reason: Explore ethical frameworks and key considerations for interspecies communication (e.g. major implications for human society). Compare and contrast implications for different animal groups (e.g. companion vs. farmed vs. wild animals).
Next steps: Identify priorities across research, policy, and other domains to ensure the ethical use of interspecies communication.

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Resources

Required readings

Pre-session exercises

Please spend 20-30 minutes completing the following three exercises.

You can write your responses in bullet point format if that’s easier.
Submit your responses in the weekly Slack thread created by your facilitator in your channel at least 24 hours before your regularly scheduled meeting.
Leave at least one comment on somebody else’s response.

Which animals do we give voice to?

[150 words] Advances in interspecies communication won’t happen for all species at once. A breakthrough with one group could have vastly different consequences than a breakthrough with another. Our existing relationships with different animals – as companions, commodities, or wild cohabitants – will shape how society reacts and transforms.

Compare and contrast how human society might transform (or not) if we developed a rudimentary means of deciphering key welfare-relevant signals (e.g. vocalizations, movements, or behaviours indicating pain, distress, fear, environmental preferences) with each of the following: