Using A.I. to decode communication of sperm whales
blue-continuum.com106 points by dnetesn 3 days ago
106 points by dnetesn 3 days ago
IMHO translation of anything interesting requires the cultural background for context. To do it with a new language requires the translator to "go native". The mega fauna gets media attention, but they would have more chance of success with one of the many dolphin pods that live up close and personal with humans. For example Shark Bay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Mia In the 1990s we had field linguists interested, but the tech sucked. It's good to try again, but a lit search might help.
I'm also fascinated by what we'd actually say, beyond "hello".
Humans from different cultures have problems communicating clearly. How would we say anything meaningful to creatures who don't share any part of our worldview?
A whale's world is upside down from our point of view - there's a flat upper limit, but no effective lower limit. They are stuck near the surface in the same way we're stuck near the ground. But they live in a much more 3-dimensional world than we do - it's much easier for them to swim down than it is for us to fly up. That's got to affect their thinking and language in ways we can't know. They will have expressions and terms that are relatable to other whales but incomprehensible to us because we don't have that same shared experience.
I think it's great that we're trying, but I'm expecting a pretty dull conversation at the end, purely because we can't say anything more meaningful in a way that they'd understand, and vice versa.
Life is an adventure, and you can't imagine that an entirely different species wouldn't have some absolutely fascinating stories to tell?
I don't want to poopoo this research because I think it's really cool. I just want to urge some caution. There are three distinct risk categories with this research that I think should trigger a halt if certain pre-specified conditions are breached.
(1) Animal welfare. The researchers are aware of the animal welfare issues at stake, but a collection of metrics around pod culture, stress, and reproduction should be tracked across experiments to make sure we're not hurting the animals. If thresholds are exceeded across multiple experimebts with this tech, the research should stop.
(2) Acoustic -> semantic gap. There's a green lumber problem with this research. We may be able to predict animal responses in playback tests, but we don't have a way to map that back to semantic meaning. This is probably fine for now, but if we don't have adequate semantic theory or if we have multiple competing semantic theories that all explain the patterns equally well, the we're just manipulating the animals, not communicating with them. (eg, It's not even really clear to me that "whale concepts" and "human concepts" would be commensurable.)
(3) Bad incentives. Between media sensationalism, the normal problems and biases that come with funding science today, and potentially terrible usages of "whale tech" (eg, clearing out shipping lanes, warfare), it seems to me there are some extra ethical considerations with this research such that there may be a point where the outcome space is overwhelmingly negative. It would be nice if mechanisms existed such that research could be stopped if these bad incentives activate.
OT but: I'm giggling thinking of these researches caring about animal welfare for their study and then eating meat for dinner
This is called a dichotomy. People are able to hold two opposing views in their heads without too much trouble.
For example; I hate to think of cows being tortured or otherwise abused. I do like a good hamburger.
that's not a coherent view, i'm sorry.
It’s also not a coherent view to think that the welfare of the planet is more important than one single human life and then to go on living in the modern way. We live in a thick soup of duplicitous thinking. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and all that.
No one realistically thinks that though so I’m not sure who you are attacking
I'm reminded of Star Trek II, III, IV and V, as well as Contact. The frontier is the illogical.
They said as much. Two opposing views do not form one coherent view. You agree on that.
Plants have feelings as well.
Why inject such disingenuous chaff into the discussion?
Two options:
- You genuinely believe that all living organisms have equal moral weight. You are either a Jainist who sweeps the floor in front of your feet to avoid treading on an insect, or else a callous murderer who would dispatch an annoying human as easily as an annoying fly.
- You are a sane person who does not in fact believe that, and this comment was some sort of bad faith "gotcha".
Gotcha, and yes I do believe they feel being killed in some form, however we are a species of selective morals depending on the situation at hand.
One does not exclude the other There is a spectrum to caring and also to meat eating habits.
We are animals too
Regarding #2, reminds me of Wittgenstein's claim that, "If a lion could speak, we couldn't understand him", because for Wittgenstein meaning is use, and lions would have different use for words than we do since there is no shared culture or biology. It would likely be even more incommensurable for sea creatures who don't share dry land with us.
I have some problems with Wittgenstein's philosophy when applied to human rationality (I think cross-game invariant structures do exist) but here I think it's an apt observation and you could very well be right. Nice!
there's this notion that things are so arbitrary and beings are so different that one can't understand eachother. I find this fascinatingly wrong.
No, we can't understand lions because lions are kinda stupid. We can't understand lions also because we haven't researched them enough.
My bet: once "beings" cross an IQ threshold, they can start to understand each other.
You might be right. I dont think its certain though. Humans seem to be able to communicate across language gaps in ways we can't with animals. Things really could be that different. For example, all human languages that we know about have some idea of a who doing something to a whom, even if they express it in drastically different syntax. For all we know (I'm just making this up, don't take it too seriously), whales might experience the world as a stream of objects. Maybe that's perfectly fine for whale existence. But we can't even really conceptualize that! And how would we know, anyway?
Eh, if I were a mad scientists with a unaligned AI and a wetlab I'd keep jamming more and more language related genes in animals to see if anything interesting happens. I know there's been some work around the NOVA1 gene that is showing interesting results.
Flowers for Algernon IRL? Planet of the apes? What part of this did they miss? (OTOH everyone wants a talking puppy?)
> we can't understand lions because lions are kinda stupid.
Lions understand each other well enough to hunt as a coordinated pack.
> we haven't researched them enough.
I don't think you or I know much about the current state of Lion research. This statement is meaningless confabulation.
> Lions understand each other well enough to hunt as a coordinated pack.
This has no bearing to what I said. We can't understand lions because they are dumb. Sure they are smart enough to hunt in a pack.
My point was that lions communicate with each other using crude ways. They are not secretly intelligent or something
If they are intelligent and curious, imagine if they let us come tell them tales of the world, works of fiction, musings of space, what if they swim around just letting us tell them of all the fascinating things we find out. Humanity may travel the cosmos, only to come home to tell our whale friends everything we learned. I wonder if there will be a whale someday with the dream of going to space.
They will say "no no, there's no problems we're having with pollution, and we think AI Godtech supremacy is a wonderful idea, and you should definitely pour all of humanities resources into going into space, and liquidate anyone who defies you".
The adventures they must be having and things they observed would feel unreal to us.
And of course I can't wait to have the cat translator. That's a big startup idea BTW, just a bit too early still.
If they are intelligent they should fear and avoid humans as we killed so many of them and other species in the oceans.
I suspect they're more intelligent than that. By, like, a lot.
When I was a teenager, I took a rowboat out onto what was then called Scammon's Lagoon, in Baja California, where the Grey whales raise their young. A mother whale -- several times the size of our boat -- and her calf approached. The calf was curious but cautious, so the mother nudged it into approaching the boat, close enough that we could reach over and rub its nose, which everyone on the boat did in turns.
What did the whales get out of this? Certainly nothing tangible -- nobody was feeding them or anything like that. But if you've ever rubbed a wild baby whale's nose while looking at it in the eyes -- and experienced the emotional connection which results -- then you will be forever incapable of hostility, apathy, or utilitarian thinking about whales.
I'm certain the mother whale knew what she was doing. She was recruiting us to her side. MUCH more effective, in the long term, than merely running away.
Had a similar but less intimate experience with orcas when I was working as an engineer on a fishing tender.
I don't have a whale moment, but my manatee moment gave me feelings that are probably similar to yours re: being incapable of feeling anything but respect and awe for the aquatic mammals we share the planet with.
In the late 80s my father took me snorkeling at the Crystal River Manatee Sanctuary[0]. We rowed our boat out into the river and anchored. I jumped in and immediately spotted an adult manatee and a calf. I've always assumed it was a mother and her calf.
Judging distance under water is difficult, but I'd put them at least 40 feet away in water that might have been 12 feet deep.
The mother put herself between me and the calf surprisingly quickly. Knowing the rules I didn't approach them. I just floated there watching.
After a few moments the calf poked its head around its mother and looked at me. It felt just like a curious child peeking from behind a parent's legs. I stayed still and just watched them (thankful my father made me wear the yellow Navy surplus horseshoe collar BC that had just enough air in it to keep me afloat without the need to tread water).
My father was still getting his SCUBA gear together and hadn't jumped in yet. I think I stuck my head up and told him they were there-- I can't remember for sure-- but I know he stayed in the boat for awhile leaving me alone with the two manatees.
As I watched over the next couple of minutes both mother and calf went up for air and moved closer to me. It seemed like they were grazing along the bottom in the plants. I didn't see them eat any of the plants, but it seemed like they were nosing around in them. I definitely got the "sea cow" comparison.
The mother got close enough for me to see ugly gashes in her back from being stuck by boat motors. They weren't bloody or raw-looking, but they did look deep and painful to have acquired. Her calf's back was smooth and a lighter color.
As they proceeded past me the calf turned, swam over its mother, and approached me. I was shocked at how fast it could reorient itself and move. Again, having been told the rules, I kept my hands close to my body and didn't move. The calf bumped into my legs and rubbed against my back as it swam past. It descended and circled back around under me and rejoined its mother. They continued swimming away from me, into the murkier deeper water and down into the sanctuary where we weren't permitted to follow.
The whole thing might have lasted 5 minutes, but it really stuck with me. The memory is surely tarnished and altered, having been recalled so many times, but I definitely got bumped by a curious manatee calf whose mother was wary but didn't flee.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_River_National_Wildlif...
Recalling more about this experience today.
There's a monument located near the outlet of a spring on the river bottom. A photo of the monument: https://www.ardeaprints.com/manatee-monument-king-spring-182...
I couldn't visit the monument-- I hadn't learned to SCUBA dive yet. My father, who was an underwater photography enthusiast, took photos of it. The next year we transferred the photos and 8mm movie footage he shot onto VHS for me to show to my 6th grade class. I can remember him reading the inscription for the tape in a very somber voice.
> "Life must become more than the wants and needs of humans. We are not on this earth alone. If the manatee goes into extinction because the needs of humans became more important then we will have taken another step backward toward our own demise. Extinction is forever and for all." - Dr. Harvey Barnett
I'd love to find that VHS. His picture is somewhere in the mess of slides I need to eventually scan.
I'd also love to back and swim with the manatees again. Apparently their populations are doing better, though they're still at risk.
... this is sadly not true.
I know the story of a farmer whose wife trained one of their pigs to be living inside the house like a dog. part of everyday activity. But the farmer still killed the pig at the end of the season, because it was the thing to do.
So i think the japanese might not have the same cultural appreciation for the emotional connection with "food"
its a wall many vegan and animal activists are struggling often
Idealistically, I really wish I could disagree with you.
Living in this reality, unfortunately I cannot.
So I should restate the whale story: that's the effect it had on me, and I still strongly suspect that this was intentional on the whale's part. But YMMV.
i am trying hard and failing to understand how your comment relates to the one you are replying to
This sentence:
> But if you've ever rubbed a wild baby whale's nose while looking at it in the eyes -- and experienced the emotional connection which results -- then you will be forever incapable of hostility, apathy, or utilitarian thinking about whales.
Comment you're replying to is saying that this is optimistic; most people are capable of doublethink, and will quite happily "love" one individual of a species while being completely indifferent to the death and suffering of the rest of that species. I've observed the same phenomenon.
>> and will quite happily "love" one individual of a species while being completely indifferent to the death and suffering of the rest of that species.
Similar to how a significant subset of the human population responds to other humans.
In that comment it was the farmers wife who trained the pig to live in the house like a dog, and then the farmer himself who killed the pig.
I do agree that doublethink is widespread (just look at how we treat other humans, no need to go across species) but I think these are choices that happen on a personal level and can hardly be generalized. I know people who stopped eating octopus after seeing My Octopus Teacher, and I've seen Chinese restaurants serving dog meat. We live in a world full of contraddictions.
The farmer still lived together with the pig, engaged with it etc. I dont know the exactl level of engagement, but i doubt that he simply never saw the pig as a pet. It was just so engrained that its a agricultural product at the end of the season, and that it was in its nature to be slaughtered that he didnt even question it.
I was not saying it isnt possible to be changed by such an experience, just that other drivers might override that. There is Vegan Hunters that kill deer for the stability of the ecosystem as an exotic example.
So are we (supposedly), yet we collaborate and hang out with other people.
That is not going to happen. I don't know how people entertain these absurd ideas about animal communication.
Crows can remember a human face for 17 years, and pass this knowledge through their murder (group).
We know animals communicate with each other, and the trend is we generally discover more and have underestimated what many animal species practice and can do.
Everyone agrees that homo sapiens and homo neanderthalensis have talked together and lived (and bred) together; what makes inter-species communication (assuming a translator or device) impossible?
No, I don’t think “universal translators” are outside the domain of science fiction; but I think us building a device that enables two-way communication between one species and us, is probably more likely than not.
[1]: https://urban.uw.edu/news/crows-hold-grudges-against-individ...
I think you are very naïve about how complicated language is. I'm not saying animals lack any intelligence whatsoever, but I don't see how remembering faces means you'll be able to talk. The crows could just have acted hostile to the masked people in front of each other. Communicating is not the same thing as language which is vastly more expressive than any non-human animal is capable of.
Not everyone agrees that Neanderthals possessed language like us either, although evidently they are much, much closer evolutionarily to us than crows or whales, and it is vastly more plausible that they talked. Having Neanderthal DNA doesn't mean that we talked with them though, it needn't have been even consensual, unfortunately.
Lots of animals communicate with each other, I think we agree. If we can automatically translate their communicative utterances into English (or any other utterances that we understand), in general, that would be remarkable, and useful! Who cares whether those utterances qualify as "language".
My whole point is what we could communicate would be profoundly limited. It's like how we can communicate with dogs to a certain extent, but we're not telling them bedtime stories. The comment I responded to originally is fantasising an absurd degree of complexity in communication which is profoundly unrealistic.
Language and written language are themselves technologies that change what individuals can do (and thus impact their societies)
There is a well-known story about this discussed in Radiolab [2010] https://radiolab.org/podcast/91725-words/transcript
Here's ChatGPT summarizing one section:
> Younger signers had developed a richer vocabulary for mental states—concepts like believe, remember, forget, understand. They were much better than the original older signers at tasks requiring them to reason about what another person thinks or knows. Later, as the older signers picked up those mental-state terms from younger people, some of them improved on the same tests. Senghas describes it as language giving them new insight into other people’s thinking and motivations.
I see several likely stories:
* Much animal communication is practical, descriptive of the present (nothing abstract, or very few abstract concepts)
* If a species could expand its communication, it would give it more powerful tools and allow for more meaningful conversation with humans
* If such a thing is possible, it will be extremely disruptive to that species
I think if you could communicate about abstract ideas with your dog, you could exchange bedtime stories. However, I don't think such a thing is possible today, and it's not clear what species (if any, besides humans) will, in fact, be able to learn such things
Nicaraguan sign language is evidence for an innate language capacity, not that it is an invented technology and certainly not evidence for Sapir Whorf.
Communication is a two-way street, with both parties negotiating and evolving some "communication protocol" over time. We won't know how far we'll be able to go until we're able to try.
There are people doing experiments with pet buttons - one-sound samplers that play a voice recording when the pet paws the button.
They're pretty damn interesting. Cats sometimes think hard about their responses. And they use metaphors. And express emotions.
There's always the suspicion this is a fake marketing exercise. But if it is, it's a very ornate and extended one.
I have no idea how we're supposed to communicate with aliens if we can't communicate with other mammals.
"They're really stupid and can't do calculus or invent FTL travel" isn't much of an excuse.
I think we rarely even try.
Except when we do, but it doesn't make for flashy press releases. Pet owners, vets, farmers throughout history - anyone who lives alongside animals, cares for them, and is open to developing an emotional relationship with them, knows animals are more than just small finite state machines made of meat. But it takes time to spot and learn the patterns of behavior, and as I said, it's a two-way street; the animal has to "open up" and learn you as much as you have to learn them.
It is a kind of thing that's difficult to cleanly verify and reproduce, and it's also kinda mundane. The cases that made headlines look like Clever Hans the other commenter mentioned.
I imagine that a better classifier, some general AI system that gets to learn and observe the animals, would be able to tease out the patterns and then translate them to English, and then that would be reproducable and make for flashy headlines.