It’s a good idea. Forming relationships with other animal species, interpersonal relationships, will accelerate their assimilation into this civilization.
It’s a soild model for how to incentivize resource allocation. As we’ve seen with ghetto after ghetto, if there’s a wall between two populations and neither side communicates across that wall, the relationships go away and savagery becomes possible.
Communication with animals is a really good idea, if we want to save the animals. Of course, by communicating with the animals we’re sort of ending their existence as animals. But oh well. Even the Mona Lisa’s falling apart.
They flew across the boundary between parallel universes, and if you can’t think of a reason to visit another civilization I hope you never get put in charge of planning the family vacation.
I think combat drones will go full autonomous this year, as a means of overcoming control signal jamming.
It will be limited-mission autonomy, and only as a capability not the default operational mode, but there will be a huge push to make the newest drones capable of continue the mission in the event of lost connection with their remote controller.
It will also be necessary because of the sheer numbers of drones involved in the Ukraine war. There simply won’t be enough pilots.
Obviously, autonomy already exists. Iron Dome operates autonomously, because attackers have the initiative, the robot is required for fast-enough response.