Animals in Translation

The Santa Fe Institute recently hosted a workshop called “Animals in Translation,” organized by Interspecies Internet, with representatives from XPrize, which aimed 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 brought together experts from the fields of animal communication, cognition, behavior, AI, philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, and the arts. Developing such criteria will inspire and encourage the pursuit of the demonstration of such translations might 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. The outcomes will contribute to the wider field of exobiology, too. In addition, representatives of the XPrize Biodiversity + Conservation will further co-develop a prize concept for animal translation based on the criteria developed.

For this public event, Diana Reiss (Hunter College, Interspecies IO) and David Krakauer (SFI) will discuss key insights which emerged from the workshop, along with never before seen interviews of participating researchers including Vint Cerf, Cat Hobatier, Neil Gershenfeld, David Gruber, and others.