Animal communication and the future of moral progress: speculations and responsibilities

By Lutebemberwa Isa @ 2025-05-27T15:51 (+10)

Imagine a world where we can talk to animals, not through body language, conditioned responses, or interpreted behaviour, but through real-time communication mediated by artificial intelligence. Scientists at projects like The Earth Species Project, among others globally, are making headway in decoding animal communication using advanced machine learning models. Their goal is ambitious: to create AI systems capable of interpreting animal signals and translating them into meaningful human language and vice versa.

This possibility, once the stuff of science fiction, is increasingly grounded in scientific progress. But what could this mean for the future of humanity, the moral status of animals, and the direction of our altruistic priorities?

The Expanding Moral Circle and Animal Sentience

Effective altruism encourages us to widen our moral circle based on evidence and reason. For many, the case for considering animal welfare, particularly for factory-farmed animals, is already compelling. Yet a sizeable portion of humanity remains unconvinced, in part due to epistemic gaps: they don't feel that animals are sentient because they cannot hear animals speak or express emotional perspectives for themselves.

If AI-mediated communication allows animals to express preferences, pain, curiosity, or even culture in ways that humans cannot ignore, this could catalyse a moral revolution. It may ultimately serve as the emotional and cognitive bridge needed to shift public consciousness from merely improving animal welfare to recognising and upholding animal rights, much like how society once moved from advocating for the humane treatment of slaves to demanding the complete abolition of slavery through the acknowledgement of their fundamental rights. If animals can tell us directly how they suffer or what brings them joy, denial becomes harder to sustain.

This could become one of the most transformative moral moments in history.

What might we learn from animals?

Every species adapts to its own ecological niche, evolving unique ways of life. We learn from each other as humans through culture and education; animals may do the same within their own species, shaped by instinct, environment, and perhaps even communal memory.

If fish from the uncharted deep or ants from untouched lands could describe what they know, we could gain knowledge of places and perspectives beyond our reach. Animals may offer insights into survival, environmental change, and even patterns of harmony and conflict that humans haven’t yet noticed.

But this assumes two crucial uncertainties:

1. That animals choose to engage with us.

2. That our AI tools will be accurate and free of anthropomorphic bias.

We must approach this with epistemic humility. Misinterpretation could misrepresent animals or manipulate their perceived interests for human ends.

A cautionary tale: utopia or dystopia?

With such discoveries, we must also contend with deeply unsettling possibilities:

• What if animals express indifference to suffering, or embrace it as part of life?
  Might this challenge our own understanding of pain and ethics?

• What if animals appear to support factory farming or at least not reject it?
  Could this embolden exploitative industries?

• What if what we thought were welfare indicators, like tail-wagging or vocalisations, turn out to be meaningless or misunderstood signals?
  Could we find that we’ve spent decades optimising for the wrong outcomes?

• What if some animals are far more aware of the world’s unfolding story than we imagine, watching silently as we unravel the planet’s balance, their behaviour shaped not by instinct alone, but by deep, quiet understanding? And what if, in our arrogance, we are the ones too blind to see our own destruction? Will we ever find the humility to listen, learn, and change before it’s too late?

There’s also the chilling possibility that all animals, when heard, confirm our worst fears: that they have all been fully sentient, have long been aware of our actions, and judge us for our indifference.

Or more darkly still: that they have nothing profound to tell us that we projected depth and meaning where there was none. Could this undercut the philosophical grounding of animal ethics?

The irreversible path of discovery

Fundamental discoveries like those in nuclear physics, genomics, or now AI are never just about the individuals who make them. They are made on behalf of all humanity. We don’t get to opt out of the consequences once the knowledge is unlocked.

If AI-enabled animal communication becomes real, the repercussions will affect us all, ethically, scientifically, and practically. As with climate change or artificial general intelligence, we bear a collective responsibility to steer this development toward good.

This calls for thoughtful, cautious, and morally rigorous engagement. We need interdisciplinary collaboration: ethicists, animal scientists, AI researchers, and policy-makers must come together before the technology reaches full maturity. 

Final thought

If we are on the cusp of understanding animals as communicative, sentient agents, then the ethical stakes are enormous. The benefits could be paradigm-shifting, offering a new era of interspecies cooperation and compassion.

But if done poorly, it could reinforce existing hierarchies, deepen exploitation, or unleash confusion about what it truly means to live, suffer, or thrive, both for humans and for animals.

We may soon be asked to listen. The real question is: Are we ready to understand, and act accordingly?