Do you want to know what your pets are thinking? I mean, really know what they’re thinking? I do not think you do. I do not think this is information that’s going to help in any way.

In a funny, smart piece for The New York Times, writer Emily Anthes explores a new app called MeowTalk, which promises to use AI technology to translate your cat’s sounds into human language. This sounds a little bit — a lot bit, actually — like a scam put together by enterprising tech moguls to separate lonely people from their money, but, while she’s appropriately skeptical, Anthes notes that there’s a little more to it than that:

In a 2019 study, Stavros Ntalampiras, a computer scientist at the University of Milan, demonstrated that algorithms could automatically distinguish between the meows that cats made in three situations: when they were being brushed, while waiting for food or after being left alone in a strange environment. MeowTalk, whose founders enlisted Dr. Ntalampiras after the study appeared, expands on this research, using algorithms to identify cat vocalizations made in a variety of contexts.

The app detects and analyzes cat utterances in real-time, assigning each one a broadly defined “intent,” such as happy, resting, hunting or “mating call.” It then displays a conversational, plain English “translation” of whatever intent it detects, such as Momo’s beleaguered “Let me rest.”

The app’s developers are aware of its inherent deficiencies, but they’re relying — not unwisely, I’d think — on user data to help further hone its technology, using AI to fill in the gaps. It is not inconceivable that enough user information could be amassed that we’d have a reasonable cat-to-human translator. Dogs — simpler, easier-to-understand animals — would surely be next.

This certainly sounds cute. Pixar definitely made it cute in Up.

But in reality, I suspect this would be a bad thing. I don’t think we want to actually know what our pets are thinking. It would conceivably destroy the pet-human relationship all together.

Right now, when my parents hang out with their dog Alice, a lovely rescue they’ve had for about six months, they are constantly thinking the best of Alice. If Alice is tired, it’s because she ran around all day. If Alice is antsy or growling, it’s because she’s hungry. If she’s wagging her tail and jumping around, it’s because she loves all of us so much.

That is the extent of information we have, because Alice can not tell us any more than what we can surmise from her movements and moods. So every emotion we assign to her is simple, and inevitably tied to something that we directly can change. Hungry, Alice? Here’s some food. Tired, Alice? Come lie down at my feet. Feisty, Alice? Let’s go wrestle in the yard.

And having this little information has served both humans and animals well. Animal companionship works in large part because what is essentially a transactional relationship — humans provide nourishment and shelter; pets provide simple, uncomplicated companionship — doesn’t feel that way; it feels emotional, even when sometimes it isn’t. When my father goes away for the weekend, Alice clearly misses him. But if my dad stopped feeding Alice, Alice would stop missing my dad. And if Alice started attacking my dad, or at least ignoring him when he came in the room, Dad would enjoy Alice a lot less. They love each other. But they also give each other things they need. They, essentially, have a contract: Do your part, I’ll do my part, and this will feel like love.

Which is to say the relationship between pets and people has a lot of gaps in it, bits of knowledge we’re better off not knowing. I’m not entirely sure what any of my pets were really thinking, and that’s one of the main reasons we got along so well: I’ll, conveniently, fill that information vacuum with beliefs that make me feel good. The dog wants me because he loves me gets to be the default emotion, because the dog can’t tell me otherwise. Expanding our communication channels is likely going to give me information I don’t want. What if my dog is really mad at me for neutering him? What if he hates me but is just tolerating me for food? Or what if he really does love me, but just not in the total and absolute way I currently assume he does?

We always think our animals are thinking cute things, because they are cute. But they aren’t. They are animals. They may be smart animals, domesticated, loyal animals. But they are still animals. Part of the mystery of animals, too, is imagining that they have a rich inner life that we just don’t have access to. If that’s true, that rich inner life is surely more complicated — and likely not nearly as flattering to us as we’d like to believe — than the simple she-just-loves-me-so-much that we currently see it as. And if it’s not true, if we discover that all your dog thinks about is pooping, eating and sleeping, how do we benefit from that knowledge?

I would argue that the amount of information we have about our pets right now is the exact right amount of information. Any less, and we wouldn’t care about them. Any more, and we might learn they care about us a lot less than we think they do. I don’t know what my pets are thinking. None of us do, not really. We should feel grateful for that. We should leave them be. Perhaps we can discover what’s going on in their brains someday. I bet we — and our pets, ultimately — will be a lot worse off for the knowledge. Leave your pet be, please.

Will Leitch writes multiple pieces a week for Medium. Make sure to follow him right here. He lives in Athens, Georgia, with his family and is the author of five books, including the Edgar-nominated novel How Lucky, now out from Harper Books. He also writes a free weekly newsletter that you might enjoy.