What if we could understand what the animals around us are saying? It’s the subject of countless movies and thought experiments, and something many of us wish we could do. Thanks to artificial intelligence, that reality may be closer than ever. Aza Raskin is the co-founder of the Earth Species Project, a nonprofit that's using AI to decode animal communication. He explains how AI identifies language patterns across the animal kingdom, which species we’re closest to understanding, and how to mitigate harms that could result from this new technology. 

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The humpback whale songs you heard in this episode were recorded by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. You can listen to the audio at https://freesound.org/s/498708/.

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