If the pickled bodies, partial skeletons, and stuffed corpses filling museums seem a little uneventful, fear not. In the latest blow to artificial intelligence, dead animals will be given a new life to share their stories, and even their experiences in the afterlife.
More than a dozen exhibits, ranging from an American cockroach and the remains of a dodo to a stuffed red panda and a fin whale skeleton, will receive the gift of conversation Tuesday for a month-long project at the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology. .
Equipped with personalities and accents, dead creatures and models can converse by voice or text via visitors’ mobile phones. The technology allows animals to describe their time on Earth and the challenges they faced, in the hope of reversing apathy towards the biodiversity crisis.
“Museums use AI in many different ways, but we believe this is the first application where we talk from the point of view of the object,” said Jack Ashby, deputy director of the museum. “Part of the experiment is to see if, by giving these animals their own voices, people think differently about them. Can we change the public perception of a cockroach by giving it a voice?”
The project was conceived by Nature Perspectivesa company that is building artificial intelligence models to help strengthen the connection between people and the natural world. For each exhibit, the AI receives specific details about where the specimen lived, its natural environment, and how it came to be in the collection, along with all available information about the species it represents.
The exhibits change tone and language to suit the age of the person they are speaking to and can converse in more than 20 languages, including Spanish and Japanese. The platypus has an Australian accent, the red panda is subtly Himalayan, and the mallard sounds like a Brit. Through live conversations with the exhibits, Ashby hopes visitors will learn more than what fits on the labels that accompany the specimens.
As part of the project, conversations that visitors have with the exhibits will be analyzed to get a better idea of the information people want about the specimens. While the AI suggests a series of questions, such as asking the fin whale “tell me about life in the open ocean,” visitors can ask whatever they want.
“When you talk to these animals, they really seem like personalities, it’s a very strange experience,” Ashby said. “I started asking things like ‘where did you live?’ and ‘how did you die?’, but it ended with much more human questions.”
When asked what it ate, the museum’s dodo, one of the most complete specimens in the world, described its Mauritian diet of fruits, seeds and the occasional small invertebrate, explaining how its strong, curved beak was perfect for opening the hard fruits. . of the tambalacoque tree.
The AI-enhanced exhibit also shared its views on whether humans should try to bring back the species through cloning. “Even with advanced techniques, the return of the dodo would require not only our DNA but also the delicate ecosystem of Mauritius that supported our species,” it said. “It is a poignant reminder that the true essence of any life goes beyond the genetic code: it is intricately woven into its natural habitat.”
The fin whale skeleton, which hangs from the museum’s ceiling, was granted a similar level of apparent consideration. When asked about the most famous person he had ever met, he admitted that in life he did not have the opportunity to meet “famous” individuals as humans see them. “However,” the AI-powered skeleton continued, “I like to think that anyone below me who feels awe, reverence, and love for the natural world is someone important.”
