As the sun rises over the island of American Samoa, a chorus of animal voices drifts upward. They're not the calls of birds, though -- the purrs, clicks and groans are coming from under the water. New research shows how automation can make it increasingly easy to eavesdrop on the fish making the sounds and uncover how their environment impacts them. Jill Munger first heard about fish that make sounds while she was an undergraduate student. A veteran researcher told her about marine acoustics.

This is an Inside Science story. As the sun rises over the island of American Samoa, a chorus of animal voices drifts upward. They're not the calls of birds, though -- the purrs, clicks and groans are coming from under the water. New research shows how automation can make it increasingly easy to eavesdrop on the fish making the sounds and uncover how their environment impacts them. Jill Munger first heard about fish that make sounds while she was an undergraduate student.

Artificial intelligence is becoming more of a presence in everyone's life. In fact, even the staunchest of technophobes can't avoid some level of AI or automation. For instance, a quick call to the bank is at least partially AI-based, as these systems use keywords or phrases to either answer questions or direct you to the appropriate representative. The advantages of scale can bring considerable benefits to companies and are "ungodly important" to a business's long-term prospects, Charlie Munger noted in his now-famous speech, The Art of Stockpicking. Munger's talk on stock picking contains Read More Most of this is due to accessibility.

Nearly two decades ago, a 10-year-old shareholder stood in front of a microphone here and asked Warren Buffett how the Internet would reshape companies. Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, said fairly little. He saw a threat in the Internet, but said he was unsure how it would ultimately affect his investments, according to a report at the time. On Saturday, that same shareholder, Thomas Kamei, now a 27-year-old investor based in New York, submitted an updated version of his question at Berkshire's annual meeting. This time, Kamei focused on artificial intelligence, a technology that threatens to upend the economy just as the Internet did years before. What did Buffett make of it?