Everything about artificial intelligence
AI can make you talk to animals. It may sound crazy, but that’s what some scientists at the University of Lincoln are at least almost trying to do. The group tries to decipher the cats’ facial expressions and meows.
“Artificial intelligence could be a valuable tool for increasing our understanding of what animals are trying to tell us,” Daniel Mills, professor of veterinary behavioral medicine at the University of Lincoln, told The Guardian.
It may not seem like it, but cats have a complex network of facial expressions for interacting with humans and another, virtually independent network for interacting with other cats.
Mills and colleagues are already trying to use AI to extract specific emotional states from the facial expressions of cats, dogs and horses.
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The researcher noted that AI could be used for animal welfare, such as scanning cows’ faces for signs of pain as they huddle together for milking. “In fact, they can do a daily health check to see how happy they are.”
Study confirms that humans can communicate with cats (Source: Onur Burak ZEYTINLI/Shutterstock)
Translated cat meow?
In addition, cat meows and other animal sounds could be examined by AI. Elodie Briefer, associate professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Copenhagen, has conducted research showing that AI can be trained to classify pigs’ vocalizations to distinguish between happy and unhappy pigs. The idea, Briefer said, is that such tools could be used to monitor animal welfare. “If there is a spike in negative calls, the farmer can check what is going on, or if they are implementing new measures like enrichment, for example, they can see if there is a spike in positive calls,” she said.
“You can get a lot more information by using AI for both vocalizations and videos to study facial expressions and body movements,” he concludes.