When you see an orangutan play a projected video game you have some thoughts: "Animals, they're just like us!" and "How long till she's playing Halo?"
It's hard not to compare the reactions of animals interacting with digital technology to our own. We might even imagine starting a cross-species conversation, given some time and software updates. But, if we could use technology to enable animals to really talk to us, would your cat's first sentence be flattering? Probably not.
A study at the Melbourne Zoo exposed six orangutans to interactive projections using an Xbox One and its Kinect motion controller. They could choose from games like "burst," in which they touched moving dots to explode them into a circle of color, and "paint," in which they could select colors and draw.
The researchers wanted to explore new ways the zoo could enrich the lives of the primates by supplying them with cognitive challenges, but observers could not resist thinking a dialogue was opening up.
Sarah Webber, a PhD candidate with the Microsoft Research Center for SocialNUI at the University of Melbourne, worked on the project. As well as investigating the animals' responses, the team asked zoo visitors for their thoughts.
"What was really interesting was people started talking about what the animals were thinking, how the animals were feeling, whether they were enjoying it or not, whether it was good for them," she explained. "'I think he's thinking this. I think he's trying to play. I think he's trying to chose a different colour.'"
In other words, we can't help it. "When we watch animals, we're trying to figure them out. We're trying to think 'how similar is this animal to me?'" she said.
Giving animals digital technology is new but not uncommon. Tablets have captivated penguins in California and a Dutch zoo is trying out a "Tinder for orangutans," but there are technologies that more explicitly allow animals to "talk," after a fashion.
Wired wrote about a computerized vest that allows a diabetic's assistance dog to pull a mechanical lever in an emergency, generating an audio message: "My handler needs you to come with me."
The next step is obvious: Figuring ways for animals to send us messages even more specific, eventually leading to genuine verbal communication. But before we bolt headfirst into this future, we should should ask if we're ready to have a real two-way conversation with the animals we tame, keep captive or breed to eat. As Wired's Clive Thompson pointed out, "we might not always like what they have to say."
If they could talk to us, it would not necessarily be pleasant, suggested Siobhan O'Sullivan, a senior lecturer in social policy at Sydney University who writes about animal welfare.
O'Sullivan pointed out that when it comes to animal life, we're typically dealing with one of two types: Wildlife and captive animals, whether for agriculture or pets.
"The kind of animals we're probably going to be speaking to are the animals we hold captive, and in more cases than not, their lives are probably not that wonderful," she speculated. "I think they would report having quite an unpleasant life in many ways."
The orangutan project successfully stirred empathy for the animals among visitors.
"If we had the capacity to ask them if they like to be in such a confined space, I think they'd say no. But I also think dumb logic actually points us to that conclusion anyway."
And if we do open those channels of communication, say with our pet dogs, that could the first domino in a long line: Do we need to afford them more rights? Do we need to start thinking about animal privacy?
We're a long way from that, O'Sullivan said. "The amount of communication we're likely to achieve will be such a basic level that I can't imagine there would be any reason ... to think we're necessarily invading the animal's privacy," she added. "We keep animals in zoos and watch their every move — that's terribly invasive — I can't think this would be any more problematic."
Ultimately, the orangutan experiment was about their welfare rather than setting up a conversation. For Webber, the orangutan project successfully stirred empathy for the animals among visitors — an important goal for the zoo and its mission of conservation. If visitors got the message thanks to their unstoppable inclination to anthropomorphize every penguin with a tablet, that's no bad thing.
But even Webber thinks there's more we can get out of our interactions with animals, and technology could help. "There's an important role for technology to play in mediating that interaction, and helping us understand the impacts we're having whether it's on our cat or dog in our home, or a population of wild bandicoots in a national park," she said.
"What do the animals want? What do they show us when we give them this technology?"
Just don't expect any compliments from the orangutans.