The ACI2022 conference continued on the afternoon of December 7, 2022 after the coffee break („Paper Session 3: Learning From and With Each Other“). Cristóbal Sepulveda Álvarez (Universidad de Chile) gave a talk on the topic „Measuring Digitally Comparative Abilities Between Discreet and Continuous Quantities through a Digital Enrichment Application“. He showed a parrot that had to choose different quantities on a touch screen. Dirk van der Linden (Northumbria University) was present on behalf of Jasmine Forester-Owen (Northumbria University). He spoke about „Noisy technology, anxious dogs: can technology support caregiving in the home?“. In their prototype, they combine noise detection and body language identification in dogs. Jérémy Barbay (Universidad de Chile) gave the last three presentations of the day: „Comparing Symbolic and Numerical Counting Times between Humans and Non-Humans Through a Digital Life Enrichment Application“, „Popping Up Balloons for Science: a Research Proposal“, and „A Loggable Aid to Speech (for Human and Non-Human Animals): A Research Proposal“. More information on the conference via www.aciconf.org.
The ACI2022 conference continued on the afternoon of December 7, 2022. „Paper Session 2: Recognising Animals & Animal Behaviour“ began with a presentation by Anna Zamansky (University of Haifa). The title was „How Can Technology Support Dog Shelters in Behavioral Assessment: an Exploratory Study“. Her next talk was also about dogs: „Do AI Models ‚Like‘ Black Dogs? Towards Exploring Perceptions of Dogs with Vision-Language Models“. She went into detail about OpenAI’s CLIP model, among other things. CLIP is a neural network which learns visual concepts from natural language supervision. She raised the question: „How can we use CLIP to investigate adoptability?“ Hugo Jair Escalante (INAOE) then gave a presentation on the topic „Dog emotion recognition from images in the wild: DEBIw dataset and first results“. Emotion recognition using face recognition is still in its infancy with respect to animals, but impressive progress is already being made. The last presentation in the afternoon before the coffee break was „Detecting Canine Mastication: A Wearable Approach“ by Charles Ramey (Georgia Institute of Technology). He raised the question: „Can automatic chewing detection measure how detection canines are coping with stress?“. More information on the conference via www.aciconf.org.
ACI2022 – the leading conference on animal-computer interaction – kicked off on December 5, 2022 at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne. After the workshop „Animal Centered Research beyond ACI: Exploring the Applicability of Animal Centered Principles to All Animal Research“ was held on the first day, the workshop „Exploring other sensibilities – beyond human senses and aesthetics“ was held on the second day. „This workshop aims to facilitate human participants to become more aware of other animals‘ sensory and aesthetic sensibilities, raising points for discussion and future research within ACI. For all animals, being able to make sense of the environment is crucial in order to gain control and make informed choices, as well as to achieve competence in daily activities. Although human perception is limited by evolution, technology can enable us to perceive signals that may be meaningful for other species, thereby gaining insight and possibly empathy. Moreover, pursuing a multi-species perspective may foster inclusive approaches to design that aim to achieve a lighter environmental impact by taking into account the sensory experiences of other species.“ (Website ACI2022) The workshop used innovative methods to achieve the goal. „We will offer participants a range of activities to challenge human senses and sense-making abilities, and then invite them to collaboratively design and test a system that incorporates some animal-centred sensory stimulation inspired by the activities previously undertaken.“ (Website ACI2022) The participants mastered the tasks with great commitment and great pleasure. The entire conference program is available at www.aciconf.org/conference-program.
The conference program for ACI’22 will be available in the course of November. In the meantime, the website lists the accepted papers in alphabetical order. Among them are the papers „A Face Recognition System for Bears: Protection for Animals and Humans in the Alps“ (Oliver Bendel and Ali Yürekkirmaz), „A Framework for Training Animals to Use Touchscreen Devices for Discrimination Tasks“ (Jennifer Cunha and Corinne Renguette), „Politicising Animal-Computer Interaction: an Approach to Political Engagement with Animal-Centred Design“ (Clara Mancini, Orit Hirsch-Matsioulas, and Daniel Metcalfe), and „TamagoPhone: A framework for augmenting artificial incubators to enable vocal interaction between bird parents and eggs“ (Rebecca Kleinberger, Megha Vemuri, Janelle Sands, Harpreet Sareen, Janet M. Baker). ACI2022 will take place 5-8 December 2022, hosted by Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Fig.: The Gateshead Millennium Bridge between Gateshead and Newcastle upon Tyne
Animal-computer interaction (ACI) „is a rapidly growing field, which focuses on the interaction between animals and computing-enabled technology and for which the International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction is the main convention venue“ (Website ACI2022). ACI2022 will take place 5-8 December 2022, hosted by Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. The „Emerging Work“ track reflects early stage efforts that either: „1) will be of interest to the ACI community and likely to generate insightful, instructional, and/or spirited discussion, and/or 2) is early enough that it could benefit greatly from community feedback on direction, design, methods, etc.“ (Website ACI2022) In this track, the paper „A Face Recognition System for Bears: Protection for Animals and Humans in the Alps“ by Oliver Bendel and Ali Yürekkirmaz was accepted. It fits very well with this year’s conference theme, „Defining Tomorrow“. „The theme acknowledges the rapid growth in technology for animals with new products coming onto the market, normalising the use of technology in many human-animal relationships, and asks: where should we go next?“ (Website ACI2022)
Fig.: View of Newcastle upon Tyne (Photo: Rüdiger Schäfer )
The impact of robotics and artificial intelligence on non-human animals has been researched by Oliver Bendel for several years. He has made it his task to complement the discipline of animal-computer interaction, which was founded by Clara Mancini, with the discipline of animal-machine interaction. His most recent paper is „Passive, Active, and Proactive Systems and Machines for the Protection and Preservation of Animals and Animal Species“, published February 25, 2022, in Frontiers of Animal Science. Also becoming active in this field now is the famous ethicist Peter Singer. Together with his co-author Yip Fai Tse, he published the article „AI ethics: the case for including animals“ in July 2022. From the abstract: „The ethics of artificial intelligence, or AI ethics, is a rapidly growing field, and rightly so. While the range of issues and groups of stakeholders concerned by the field of AI ethics is expanding, with speculation about whether it extends even to the machines themselves, there is a group of sentient beings who are also affected by AI, but are rarely mentioned within the field of AI ethics – the nonhuman animals. This paper seeks to explore the kinds of impact AI has on nonhuman animals, the severity of these impacts, and their moral implications. We hope that this paper will facilitate the development of a new field of philosophical and technical research regarding the impacts of AI on animals, namely, the ethics of AI as it affects nonhuman animals.“ (Peter Singer and Yip Fai Tse 2022) In the text, the authors write: „Of the hundreds of AI ethics related papers we reviewed in this project, we only found four that concern the impacts of AI on animals, in a general way, and discuss the relevant ethical implications. They are: ‚Towards animal-friendly machines‘ by Oliver Bendel, ‚AI Ethics and Value Alignment for Nonhuman Animals‘ by Soenke Ziesche, ‚Moral Consideration of Nonhumans in the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence‘ by Andrea Owe and Seth Baum and ‚Animals and AI. The role of animals in AI research and application – An overview and ethical evaluation‘ by Leonie Bossert and Thilo Hagendorf.“ (Peter Singer and Yip Fai Tse 2022) The article will certainly give the young disciplines a further boost.
Clara Mancini (The Open University) and Eleonora Nannoni (University of Bologna) are calling for abstracts and papers for the Frontiers research topic „Animal-Computer Interaction and Beyond: The Benefits of Animal-Centered Research and Design“. They are well-known representatives of a discipline closely related to animal-machine interaction. „The field of Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) investigates how interactive technologies affect the individual animals involved; what technologies could be developed, and how they should be designed in order to improve animals’ welfare, support their activities and foster positive interspecies relationships; and how research methods could enable animal stakeholders to participate in the development of relevant technologies.“ (Website Frontiers) The editors welcome submissions that contribute, but are not necessarily limited, to the following themes: 1) „Applications of animal-centered and/or interactive technologies within farming, animal research, conservation, welfare or other domains“, and 2) „Animal-centered research, design methods and frameworks that have been applied or have applicability within farming, animal research, conservation, welfare or other domains Submission information is available through the website“ (Website Frontiers). More submission information is available through the Frontiers website.
