I agree, just being more certain of their inner worlds and how they are feeling would be huge. I really think we are headed in that direction as well. The ability for many animals to make controlled enough sounds may be a pretty limiting factor of their ability to share their inner worlds in much detail, so maybe some sort of eeg technology or some other way to bridge the gap with animal computer interfaces may be key for greater interspecies communication in some cases. There are, however, some animals that are capable of making sounds that can potentially hold a large amount of data, such as Sperm Whales or Bottlenose Dolphins, so maybe for them a simple translator may suffice for some pretty interesting exchanges. Although, it is possible that body language, positioning, or things we haven’t thought of that play large roles in the meanings of their sounds.

Yes, it is quite a niche field! I suspect it will be less niche in the not too distant future, it is one of many fields that is experiencing a transformation from relatively recent machine learning advancements. The more data that can be collected, the greater chance we have of AI offering up new insights. I am certainly excited to watch as things progress, I’ve been repeatedly mind-blown since I’ve been paying attention to it.