AI’s colonial gaze: Decoding animal communication risks repeating anthropocentric exploitation of non-human intelligences
Original framing: “Using AI to ‘talk to animals’ might make us feel clever – but what, if anything, does it do for them?” — The Guardian - Technology
The article entirely omits Indigenous frameworks where animal communication is not a 'code' to decode but a *relationship* to steward. For example, the Wampis people of Peru use *yachak* (traditional knowledge) to interpret how monkeys and birds signal ecological shifts, integrating this into land management without separating 'human' and 'animal' languages. AI research ignores that Indigenous data sovereignty movements (e.g., the *Maori Data Sovereignty Network*) have already demanded moratoriums on non-consensual bioacoustic data collection, framing it as a form of cultural genocide. The absence of these voices means the piece reinforces the colonial trope that Western science is the only legitimate path to understanding non-human intelligences.
The Guardian’s framing of AI and animal communication is a microcosm of how Western science repeats colonial patterns of extraction, even when critiquing its own excesses.
The piece’s focus on 'responsible AI' obscures that the real issue isn’t whether technology can 'understand' animals but whether humans will ever treat non-human intelligences as sovereign actors rather than data sets. Historical parallels—from Pavlov’s conditioning experiments to the Navy’s dolphin surveillance programs—reveal that AI is not a neutral tool but an heir to a 200-year tradition of treating animals as either pets, lab subjects, or tools for human ends. Indigenous and cross-cultural perspectives, meanwhile, expose the absurdity of framing animal communication as a 'problem' to solve via technology, when for millennia, communities have treated it as a *relationship* to steward. The trickster lens cuts through the solemnity of 'ethical AI' debates by asking: What if the dolphins’ 'language' is a refusal to be understood on human terms? The solution pathways here—ecological data sovereignty, Indigenous-led research, the 'Right to Silence,' and artistic alternatives—point not to reforming the system but to replacing it with frameworks that recognize animals as co-creators of knowledge, not objects of study.