Attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with AI, then talk back

[Misdicorl]

God I cannot wait to talk to whales. Their oral histories must be incredible. People have fantasized about communicating with extraterrestrials for ages. I don't understand why we haven't invested significant resources in trying to communicate with the other animals on our own planet. What an incredibly weird and non translatable experience it will be to (finally?!) start this adventure with whales.

Tangent time. If you do a cursory search of how smart whales are, you'll get nonsense about how humans are much smarter because the size of the brain isn't relevant, its the ratio of the brain size to the body size. But somehow that argument doesn't apply to squirrels. Or to a 7 foot human vs. a 4.5 foot human. Whales probably aren't as smart as humans, but its due to the environmental pressures selecting for intelligence, not raw capability. Whales have the capability to far outstrip humans in intelligence (if you accept that neuron count and neuron connections are the raw inputs). Lets get some whale engineers working on the hard problems please.

[tsol]

I mean.. hate to be a party pooper, but just because we created a the equivalent of gpt3 for whales, does that mean we can do anything useful? Like talking to whales.. we haven't even established how their language works.

What language even is, is a good question. I read it once demonstrated as this; some species of monkey has a specific call they do when they see a panther, and it results in all the monkeys who hear it to run up their trees. Now what does this call mean? It could mean "jaguar alert!", pointing to a very specific concept-- a certain animal is here and we all know they're dangerous.

It could also mean "I'm scared!", and maybe it's just monkey see monkey do. It could also mean something more abstract, like a blood curdling scream-- there's no one thing that it means, but as humans we instinctively know that people don't scream like that unless something legitimately awful is happening. So maybe the call communicates emotion rather than an intellectual concept-- it's a call of fear that makes other monkeys who hear it also scared.

Just breaking down what animal language even _is_, is a challenge. I'm not optimistic on hearing any oral histories of whales, or even that they record history. I mean humans only started recording history for its own sake like 2000 years ago with herodotus. Before then we have tablets to keep track of stock, letters, and murals which were often made to depict the strength of the reigning emperor and the foes he vanquished. So maybe if we talk to whales it'll be a little like if aliens came to ancient Egypt to talk to the pharaoh; we'll just get a dictator whale telling us about all the other whales he's killed and how he's the greatest.. haha probably not that, though.

[franky47]

> Lets get some whale engineers working on the hard problems please.

Somehow I pictured whales as the engineers in this sentence. It makes it even better.

[forgotmypw17]

You can do it today with other species. We are lucky to still be surrounded by all kinds of animals: mammals, birds, and even insects.

Of course, in order to talk, you have to spend a lot of time listening first. And what they say cannot often be translated to human talk.

In order to make friends, you have to give first. Our society teaches us to stay away from nature and leave it be, so you have to break past that.

The rewards are breathtaking and totally worth the effort.

[WalterBright]

Brain size may not necessarily correlate with intelligence because it isn't the number of neurons, it's the organization and optimization of them.

Just like we make much more powerful CPU chips in the same volume of silicon as before.

And it could be that it just isn't necessary for whales to optimize brain density, like it is for humans and crows.

[kevinmchugh]

We've invested quite a lot in trying to communicate with other ape species. There's very little to show for it. Koko the signing gorilla is the biggest success and 1) that was conducted hugely unethically 2) had a closely-involved researcher/caretaker/interpreter. Without the lead researcher communication was very limited.

[tablespoon]

> God I cannot wait to talk to whales. Their oral histories must be incredible.

What makes you think they'd have oral histories?

[thaumasiotes]

> Whales have the capability to far outstrip humans in intelligence (if you accept that neuron count and neuron connections are the raw inputs).

Understood normally, the raw input also includes the software installed in the whale's brain. This limits the potential capability of whales.

If you were to overwrite that with software of your own design, you'd have a robot in the body of a whale, but not an actual whale.

[01100011]

Do we even know that whales communicate with conscious intent? What if the sounds they make were mere reflexes driven by some internal state like adrenaline, sex or hunger hormones?

[aahortwwy]

> If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.

[PicassoCTs]

They will sing us the song of the great holocaust of the 1800s, of the day the metal surface whales turned the skies red and nothing could save them.

[klipt]

> Their oral histories must be incredible.

Everything was idyllic in the before times. Then the human ships arrived and ruined everything. Some of them killed us. Others ignored us but polluted the ocean with noise so we couldn't hear each other's whale songs anymore.

[psukhedelos]

I wonder if this type of research itself might at some point influence an animal’s language.

In this study, if the researchers were to consistently play a particular call when a school of fish were nearby I wonder if younger whales might learn the human produced call to mean a school of fish. Is it possible this research could instead lead to us presenting a species with our interpretation of their language which we would then have a much clearer understanding of?

Rather that just us understanding them, I wonder how this might help them understand us.

[franky47]

Does the AI training dataset involve dropping a whale from great heights ?

"Ahhh! Woooh! What's happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I?"

https://www.thecharacterquotes.com/the-whale

[awakeasleep]

This sounds like a nightmare for the whales, to have an AI babbling into the whales shared communication channel.

[jtbayly]

Hey y’all, over by the Horn of Africa there’s a big school of diamond-studded squirrels. Break a leg.

[JoeyBananas]

Sounds nice but they'll probably end up creating a psychological warfare weapon for use against whales. The whales will be confused and disoriented by non-sense sounds coming from a fake whale.

[monkeycantype]

Finally, we'll be able to charge them fair market rates for their access to our fishing rights

[freygibbs]

Imagine talking and communicating with other whales through frequency waves is something. If this is quite possible, we should understand how they speak and have a language different from other animals and sea creatures.

[short12]

The first commercial use will be slamming them with advertising

[RattleyCooper]

AI doesn't understand context. I highly doubt AI will be able to convey anything meaningful, and if they can how would we know?

[peebz]

Perhaps they should call the system 'Gavag-AI"

[joshu]

i thought this was about advertising.

[booleandilemma]

The idea of finally talking to something we’ve been killing for resources for centuries is kinda weird.

[quotha]

Guarantee they just want us to shut the fuck up.

[dang]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've been doing it repeatedly, and we're hoping for something different here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[ceejayoz]

Not sure why this is getting downvoted; it's probably very true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_mammals_and_sonar

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/science/oceans-whales-noi...

> Some scientists say the noises from air guns, ship sonar and general tanker traffic can cause the gradual or even outright death of sea creatures, from the giants to the tiniest — whales, dolphins, fish, squid, octopuses and even plankton. Other effects include impairing animals’ hearing, brain hemorrhaging and the drowning out of communication sounds important for survival, experts say.

> A 2017 study, for example, found that a loud blast, softer than the sound of a seismic air gun, killed nearly two-thirds of the zooplankton in three-quarters of a mile on either side. Tiny organisms at the bottom of the food chain, zooplankton provide a food source for everything from great whales to shrimp. Krill, a tiny crustacean vital to whales and other animals, were especially hard hit, according to one study.

[pvaldes]

Hum, is interesting but, trying to talk with sperm whales has its own special type of risks. The whale reply could kill you.

[pvaldes]

We are talking about being shoot with 230 decibels and this will kill any human diving near the whale. More than 185 Db are lethal. Is a defense system when startled.

[spfzero]

David tried this in the movie Prometheus, didn't work out well.

[ceejayoz]

Whale: “Hey, I found some fish.”

Whale Eliza: “Interesting. How does that make you feel?

Whale: “What the fuck?”

[gnarbarian]

"If a lion could speak we wouldn't understand him." - Wittgenstein

https://ideasandaction.com/if-a-lion-could-speak/

[geenew]

You should look up the Far Side comic where a professor invents a dog translator. Turns out the only thing dogs say is 'Hey! Hey! Hey!'.

[kace91]

Not sure if it's the case with whales, bit as far as I know there is no recorded use of questions in the animal kingdom - all communication seems to be enunciative, or orders. Questions are exclusive to humans...

[chippy]

what the eat

[samirillian]

lol, the opposite of this actually

[unanswered]

> really transformational cultural moments

Prediction: an astonishingly large portion of animal utterances will have to do with reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that humans pour into the atmosphere. You heard it here first.

[qayxc]

Aye, turns out the whales are close friends with Koko and agree with everything she, um... said.

[spoonjim]

Gosh why can’t we leave them alone. This is like impersonating someone’s spouse with a deepfaked voice and then having an intimate conversation with them.