Company hopes to use AI to decode animal language in California

An East Bay company is trying to use artificial intelligence to figure out how animals communicate.

Berkeley-based Earth Species Project said that with billions of dollars being spent on how AI affects humans, it is using the technology to help society learn more and "decode animal communication."

The nonprofit organization listens to animals in the wild and then uses AI to collect all that data to figure out what is being said by each other.

"They have backpacks on the birds so it records how the animals move, what they say, we also get video, and we can use all of that to start to get hints of, oh, there are things they say to their chicks before they leave their nest," Said Aza Raskin, president of the Earth Species Project.

Jared Blumenfeld, president of the Bay Area's Waverley Street Foundation, said it makes sense to the technology in nature.

"It's incredibly intriguing, and I think of all the inventions or breakthroughs that we could think of. This is one of the larger ones that are changing the way we think of our role on the planet," Blumenfeld said.