The first breakthrough from superhuman AI mathematics was the discovery in 2039 of a meta-statistical pattern common to all screams of pain across almost every species. With the appropriate gauge transformation across biological topoi you could show that horses in pain screamed like humans, whales like snakes, individual robins like entire ecosystems. Ecologists tried to drum up political support by translating the silent agony of a hundred biomes but gave up the idea when this led to people disengaging with uncomfortable speed. Linguists in the real SETI program exchanged worried, meaningful silences as they crossed each other on university hallways, oblivious to the cosmologists' empty stares and the spontaneous coordination of their silence about the cosmic microwave background.
(Originally posted on my blog.)