The Animals Are Talking—Are We Ready to Listen? Aza Raskin on Life With Machines
This is the episode that unites my love of nature with love of tech
Hey friends,
What if I told you that dolphins pass pufferfish like a joint? That lemurs trip on millipedes? That animals, just like us, seek altered states—not just survival, but transcendence?
And what if I told you we’re on the verge of cracking open their language?
This week on Life With Machines, I sat down with Aza Raskin to talk about the Earth Species Project, an effort to decode animal communication using AI. This conversation floored me. It’s not just about teaching parrots to curse or decoding whale songs for fun—it’s about a radical shift in how we understand intelligence, governance, and power itself. And the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Watch the full episode here:
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The Sound of Words
And here’s the audio of this newsletter if you’re tired of looking at your screen. But it doesn’t include the bonus show clip and our team’s recommendations….
Baratunde’s Take
I’m sending this from SXSW in Austin. If you’re there, come hang! Now… some thoughts still reverberating after my chat with Aza:
(1) Animal Communication as a Mirror for Humanity
This is a chance to level up—to learn from species that have governed themselves for millennia without collapsing into misinformation loops or democracy-ending feedback spirals. How do animals hunt, distribute power, make decisions? What if the answers we need aren’t in business school case studies but in the movement of a school of fish or the decision-making of a wolf pack?
Indigenous knowledge systems have always understood this, and frankly, the European Renaissance owes a debt to those insights (hi David Graeber). But we’ve spent centuries ignoring them, pretending we’re the only ones with something to teach. Now, AI is forcing us to reconsider. If we listen, we might finally become a two marshmallow species—capable of patience, foresight, and restraint. Right now, we’re the toddler stuffing our face with marshmallows, then lying about it.
(2) The Risk: AI as the Ultimate Colonial Tool
I remember seeing Steven Petranek speak at TED years back. He said “we should colonize Mars the way we colonized the New World.” Yeah, no. That mindset got millions of Indigenous people wiped out. And here’s the thing—I fear we’ll do it again, but this time to the animal kingdom.
We’ve already disrupted their world with light pollution, noise pollution, habitat destruction, poaching, not to mention eating them! Now imagine the extractive, exploitative version of AI-enabled animal communication. What happens when we start manipulating whale migration patterns for commercial shipping? Hijacking predator-prey relationships for industrial fishing? When tech bros inevitably decide they can "optimize" or “disrupt” the natural world for profit?
This could be the most beautiful breakthrough in human history—or the final nail in the coffin of what’s left of the wild. The beauty and peril is that the choice is ours.
(3) Dolphins Getting High—A Portal to Something Deeper
The idea of dolphins puff-puff-passing a pufferfish is hilarious, but it also says something profound. Animals don’t just exist. They seek. They alter their minds, chase joy, search for something more. That should change how we see them. Not as programmable automatons running on instinct, but as beings with agency, culture, and inner lives we barely understand.
We’re obsessed with making AI more human. Maybe it’s time to make ourselves more attuned to the rest of life on this planet. To make humans more alive. And maybe, just maybe, the animals have been waiting for us to finally listen.
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Life with BLAIR
BLAIR, our AI co-producer, tried to contribute to this conversation, but let’s just say their linguistic model isn’t quite ready for whale song. We’ll work on that. You can see what I mean here.
Team Recommendations
Want to explore more? Here are some resources inspired by this episode:
This article on the race to translate animal communication using AI
This video on the vocalizations of beluga whales
This piece on the Earth Species Project's
Thanks for being part of this conversation. Now, a question for you: if you could speak to any animal, which one would you choose—and why? Drop a comment, share this with your most animal-loving friend, and let’s keep the conversation going.
Peace,
Baratunde
Here’s a bonus question I asked Aza about the relationship between his work on Earth Species Project and the Center for Humane Technology. Have a great week. See yall soon!