The Earth Species Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit focused on decoding animal communication with the help of AI, recently received $17 million in new grants from billionaires. Reid Hoffman’s Aphorism Foundation contributed $10 million, while the Waverley Street Foundation, led by Laurene Powell Jobs, pledged $7 million over three years. The organization plans to use this funding to expand its AI research team and further its study of bird vocalization patterns and the development of an early model for animal communication.
Co-founded by Aza Raskin, Britt Selvitelle, and Katie Zacarian, the Earth Species Project aims to enable humans to communicate with other species or at least understand them by 2030. The organization funds research on specific animals’ vocalization patterns, like beluga whales and zebra finches, while also working on a general model similar to ChatGPT for human communication. This general model, released in 2022, uses machine learning techniques to identify patterns in audio recordings of animals from various species, with the ultimate goal of extracting meaning from the data.
Since its inception, the Earth Species Project has published peer-reviewed papers on its research findings and self-published additional papers. The organization relies heavily on donations from billionaires, many of whom have connections to Silicon Valley. With previous funding from Hoffman, Larsen, the Internet Archive, and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the new $17 million in grants will support the expansion of the research team and data collection efforts to train the AI models.
One of the biggest challenges faced by the Earth Species Project is access to training data. Unlike language models that can train on vast amounts of internet data, the organization needs specific recordings from various animal species. Separating individual animal sounds from background noise and the lack of commercial funding for animal communication AI models are additional hurdles. Critics question whether animal communication can be truly translated without assuming fundamental similarities to human speech.
Despite being a nonprofit, the Earth Species Project and its funders approach their work in an entrepreneurial manner, viewing the recent grants as a significant milestone similar to a for-profit startup’s funding round. Raskin is optimistic about the potential of their technology, citing the successful use of their foundational model by biologists to decode field recordings. The organization’s innovative approach aims to shift humanity’s understanding of our place in the natural world, potentially contributing to efforts to combat climate change and preserve biodiversity.
