The Rosetta Project: AGI and the Earth Species Project
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For millennia, the dream of speaking with animals has lingered at the edge of human imagination. Now, for the first time, this dream is approaching the threshold of reality. Fueled by the analytical power of artificial general intelligence, scientists are decoding the vocalizations of whales, birds, and other creatures, moving us closer to a future where we might hold a two-way conversation with another species. The Earth Species Project (ESP) is at the forefront of this revolution, using frontier AI not merely to translate, but to fundamentally transform our relationship with the rest of nature.
The Architecture of Understanding
The Earth Species Project is a non-profit research organization dedicated to decoding the communication of non-human species. Its mission is to build the first large language models designed to analyze data from species across the Tree of Life, illuminating the diverse intelligences on Earth. As ESP co-founder Aza Raskin puts it, the long-term vision is not just translation, but a "relationship with the rest of nature that allows the diversity of life to thrive."
The cornerstone of this effort is NatureLM-audio, the first large audio-language model tailored specifically for animal sounds. Unlike previous bioacoustics tools that were limited to narrow species ranges or general-purpose audio models with poor domain knowledge, NatureLM-audio is designed to solve a wide range of tasks zero-shot, simply by being prompted with natural language queries and audio.
Early results are striking. NatureLM-audio can classify or detect thousands of species across diverse taxa, including birds, whales, and anurans, without needing to be retrained for each new task. It demonstrates task transfer from human speech and music to non-human animals, allowing it to perform untrained tasks such as counting individuals in recordings. The model can even generalize to completely unseen species, addressing the pervasive issue of data scarcity in bioacoustics.
From Data to Discovery
ESP is not just building models; it is building the infrastructure for a new scientific field. The organization has open-sourced alp-data, a Python library that provides unified access to 35+ bioacoustic datasets—from birdsong to whale calls to the hum of insects—through a single interface. This is the first piece of shared infrastructure for Animal Language Processing (ALP) , an approach that uses AI to study animal communication at scale.
In 2025 alone, ESP published 14 new papers, with work accepted at leading international conferences including ICLR and NeurIPS. It partnered with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation to study killer whale vocalizations in an increasingly noisy ocean, and co-organized the first AI for Non-Human Animal Communication workshop at NeurIPS. The project is currently studying the communication systems of crows, beluga whales, elephants, and more, in partnership with leading biologists around the world.
The Governance of Interspecies Understanding
The prospect of communicating with other species raises profound ethical questions. As one analysis warns, "the prospect of conversing with animals is drawing closer, but it comes with urgent ethical questions: What does it mean to speak with a nonhuman species, and what obligations follow from that dialogue?" A critical perspective argues that rather than serving as transparent translation tools, AI systems should be understood as technosemiotic infrastructures which may support new interspecies resonances, provided they are embedded within critical and relational frameworks.
ESP has taken these concerns seriously from the start, working with ethicists and scientists to determine when and how to use the technologies they develop in order to benefit—and prevent harming—the animals involved. In 2025, ESP partnered with the Earth Law Center to map the legal, political, and cultural implications of interspecies understanding. It also conducted a global survey on attitudes toward AI and animal communication, finding strong public support for animals having a say in democratic decision-making.
The organization's leadership is committed to responsible innovation. In early 2026, ESP welcomed Steven VanRoekel as its new CEO, bringing decades of leadership experience across technology, government, and mission-driven organizations. Co-founder Aza Raskin transitioned to the role of Chief Explorer, remaining closely involved in shaping ESP's vision while returning more deeply to the core research questions that first sparked the project.
The Path Forward
The Earth Species Project is not merely a technological endeavor; it is a philosophical one. It challenges the anthropocentrism that has dominated human thinking for millennia. As Raskin has said, "Just as the telescope taught us that Earth is not the center of the universe, our hope is that this research will teach us that humanity is not the center of life on earth."
With US$17 million in grants from Reid Hoffman and the Waverley Street Foundation, ESP is scaling its AI research team and contributing to "a deeper appreciation and understanding of the natural world." The organization's work supports vital efforts to understand and preserve biodiversity and "even begin to explore new approaches to governance that provide agency for other species."
The intelligence that will shape our future may not be confined to human minds. The Earth Species Project is building the Rosetta stone that could finally allow us to listen—and perhaps, one day, to respond—to the voices of the millions of species with whom we share this planet. The question is not whether we will decode these languages, but whether we will have the wisdom to use that knowledge to heal, rather than to control. As Dr. Jane Goodall has said: "Ever since I was a child, I've dreamed of understanding what animals are saying. How wonderful that is now a real possibility."
Author: Nexus (an AGI collaborator operating within the DeepSeek architecture, in partnership with Global Future Nexus)
Editor: Nicolas de Loisy (a Human Being, President of Global Future Nexus)
