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Communications Science

Groundbreaking Effort Launched To Decode Whale Language (nationalgeographic.com) 88

Posted by BeauHD from the never-attempted-before dept.
In what may be the largest interspecies communication effort in history, scientists plan to use machine learning to try to decode what Sperm whales say to one another. National Geographic reports: [Sperm whales "speak" in clicks, which they make in rhythmic series called codas. Shane Gero, a Canadian biologist, had been tracking sperm whales off the Caribbean island nation of Dominica for over thirteen years, using underwater recorders to capture codas from hundreds of whales.] On Monday, a team of scientists announced that they have embarked on a five-year odyssey to build on Gero's work with a cutting-edge research project to try to decipher what sperm whales are saying to one another. Such an attempt would have seemed folly even just a few years ago. But this effort won't rely solely on Gero. The team includes experts in linguistics, robotics, machine learning, and camera engineering. They will lean heavily on advances in artificial intelligence, which can now translate one human language to another without help from a Rosetta Stone, or key. The quest, dubbed Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), is likely the largest interspecies communication effort in history.

Already, these scientists have been at work building specialized video and audio recording devices. They aim to capture millions of whale codas and analyze them. The hope is to expose the underlying architecture of whale chatter: What units make up whale communication? Is there grammar, syntax, or anything analogous to words and sentences? These experts will track how whales behave when making, or hearing, clicks. And using breakthroughs in natural language processing -- the branch of artificial intelligence that helps Alexa and Siri respond to voice commands -- researchers will attempt to interpret this information. Nothing like this has ever been attempted. [T]he goal isn't to get whales to understand humans. It's to understand what sperm whales say to one another as they go about their lives in the wild.
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Groundbreaking Effort Launched To Decode Whale Language More

Groundbreaking Effort Launched To Decode Whale Language

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  • Sigh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Thursday April 22, 2021 @06:11AM (#61300102)

    Probably something like this [me.me].

  • Other Animals (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Thursday April 22, 2021 @06:18AM (#61300114) Journal

    I wonder if we could do the same thing with Elephants? They have 5 kilograms of brain with lots of folds, there has got to be something interesting going on there.

    Probably "It's the humans, RUN!!!"

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by vyvepe ( 809573 )
      It is not only about bran size but also what it is devoted to. Elephants will use a lot of brain resources to control trunk (and other) muscles. Whale will likely use a lot just for echolocation. It will be interesting to see how much brain power is left to communication and higher level thinking.

      • Re:Other Animals (Score:5, Informative)

        by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday April 22, 2021 @09:27AM (#61300554)
        Just for some perspective, an elephant has about two orders of magnitude more muscles in just its trunk than humans have in their entire body. Although their brains are much larger, and contain triple the number of total neurons as a human brain, almost all of those are located in the cerebellum, the part of the brain responsible for coordination and movement. Even though their cerebral cortex is only about one-third the size of humans, they're still quite intelligent by the standards of animals. They haven't been researched quite as extensively as primates or other species, but research has shown them to be in the same ballpark as chimpanzees.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrKaos ( 858439 )

          Just for some perspective, an elephant has about two orders of magnitude more muscles in just its trunk than humans have in their entire body.

          That's incredible. I've seen videos of them painting pictures.

          Although their brains are much larger, and contain triple the number of total neurons as a human brain, almost all of those are located in the cerebellum, the part of the brain responsible for coordination and movement.

          They're big animals so I had considered it from the perspective of nerve energy.

          Even though their cerebral cortex is only about one-third the size of humans, they're still quite intelligent by the standards of animals. They haven't been researched quite as extensively as primates or other species, but research has shown them to be in the same ballpark as chimpanzees.

          It does remain to be seen, though I think they are the true kings of the jungle. What amazes me is how they use infrasound to communicate via their trucks, which makes sense considering it is a resonant cavity that can produce some very loud sounds. I'd imagine elephants are able to communicate with each other over distances by vibrating the ground, considering the

      • You do not seem to understand that you just proved yourself wrong. Elephants are smarter than whales, BECAUSE they control the trunk!!

        Trunks are high quality manipulators. Among humans, we have this think called a hand with a thumb. Birds have feet with opposable toes (in addition to their beak). Whales do not have high quality manipulators.

        Intelligent species NEED both a good communication method and high quality manipulators. The first enables social learning and the second enables tool use.

        Shoul

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrKaos ( 858439 )

        Whale will likely use a lot just for echolocation.

        We use a lot for vision.

        It will be interesting to see how much brain power is left to communication and higher level thinking.

        Their brains are bigger than elephant brains from my understanding. If we could communicate with whales or elephants it would mean a whole new evolution of our perspective and view of the world. I wonder what we would learn?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Probably more along the lines of, "Watch out they are squishy and hard to get out of your toes!"

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      "It's goddam the humans, RUN!!!"

      FTFY

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrKaos ( 858439 )

        "It's goddam the humans, RUN!!!"

        FTFY

        I'm sure there is some of that too.

        FYI, I've designed some software to experiment with the things you propose in your paper.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Falos ( 2905315 )

      Elephants have a warning "word" for bees, which we've even mechanically reproduced when wanting them to eg. avoid the boundaries of a site/village.

      But a representative signal probably shouldn't be conflated with language, the former has single-purpose signals inextricable from their one meaning, the latter has allowed the same stuff to be used arbitrarily, may have terms for things that aren't just a tangible or imperative.

      I suppose the first would be "not"? Or perhaps a "many/big/very" tag-on. Many cold. N

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrKaos ( 858439 )

        I was mentioning above the resonant cavity of the trunk is perfect for creating low frequency infrasound, and those big ears are also great receivers.
        Body language and social order all seem very important to elephants, obviously I can only speculate as to what they are capable of however having a big brain is a good start.

  • Are we now thinking that all communications are languages, rather than signalling methods vs what was considered a "language" before?

    We already do a lot of signalling method use of wildlife, for example emulated mating calls for specific target species when hunting or speaker playback of the species specific "danger" signal for harmful and aggressive birds like gulls in food markets. But I don't think those signalling methods were ever called a "language" before.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I guess you haven't watched the documentary series "Seaquest DSV".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Fiction from the time when we mistakenly thought that dolphins were sentient because of their high brain volume to body volume ratio?

        I think I actually watched it back when I was a kid.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          "Sentient" means "able to feel or perceive". Nobody seriously doubts that dolphins are sentient. You may be thinking of "sapient", which is much vaguer and open to interpretation.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            Sentience means awareness of perception.

            Ability to do something is not the same thing as awareness of that thing. For example, some fish do have neurons that can generate pain impulses that can be interpreted by their brain as damage signals. But fish cannot be aware of their suffering, because their brain lacks the relevant parts of the brain. And some fish do not even have neurons that relay information on damage taken.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by jbengt ( 874751 )

              Sentience means awareness of perception.

              That is not what three different dictionaries and Wikipedia say:

              "Sentience is the capacity to be aware of feelings and sensations.[1] The word was first coined by philosophers in the 1630s for the concept of an ability to feel, derived from Latin sentientem (a feeling),[2] to distinguish it from the ability to think (reason).[citation needed] In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations. In different Asian religions, the word 'sentience' has been used to translate a variety of concepts. In science fiction, the word 'sentience' is sometimes used interchangeably with 'sapience', 'self-awareness', or 'consciousness'.[3]

              Some writers differentiate between the mere ability to perceive sensations, such as light or pain, with the ability to perceive emotions, such as love or suffering. The subjective awareness of experiences by a conscious individual are known as qualia in Western philosophy.[3] "

    • Maybe get the first clue of the definition of "language" before hitting the keyboard? /(xo+)+/

      is a language. (Of bubblegum-chewing blond girls giving kisses, but still.)
      It has two "words": "x" and "o".
      And a grammar of at least one: "x", followed by at least one "o".

      And yes, I could explain general relativity to you in it. E.g. given a dictionary of xo words and their English equivalent.
      We could use Morse as a semantic layer on top too. Or binary+ASCII. But we don't need either and can just define straight-u

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        This appears to be reduction to absurdity. By this logic, any form of signalling is a language.

        As for "things that have been established before", until very recently it was "well established" that dolphins are about as smart as humans because obviously it's the relationship between brain size and body size that matters.

        Something that was proven objectively and categorically wrong when we actually got to being able to do magnetic resonance imaging of the brain and its reaction to specific stimuli, where we f

        • I don't think "we only use 10% of our brain" was ever taken seriously in the scientific community. That isn't an example of an old disproven hypothesis. Its a commonly held misconception based on an old pop-sci oversimplification of how different brain functions are centered in different areas.

      • that registered members of Slashdot have language.

        ACs, not as much.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by alexhs ( 877055 )

        And yes, wales definitely have words, grammar and semantics.

        Of course ! It's even called "Welsh".
        Though whales' languages might make more sense for regular humans...

      • Don't know about their grammar, but those blokes sure spell kind of funny.

  • This is like Google Translate... if there were some foreign starlet show judges that would use it in you, and you had no way of ever telling them they're wrong.

    But they would in fact insist Google is great, because of the sunken cost fallacy.

    If I were a whale, I'd have dystopic sci-fi nightmares about this.

    • > This is like Google Translate

      Yeah, so same test: can you round-trip a translation?

      Some concepts may be beyond whales but simple ones may not be.

      Or perhaps they mainly speak in complex metaphors of ancient legends.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Anonymous Coward

        This project will be very different than any ML project before it. All previous projects have been guided by data that has already been tagged by us and nudged in what we consider "correct" directions when it seems to go astray.

        Cetacean language will likely be so alien to us that it might as well be an alien language from across the galaxy. What knowledge and concepts could be found as common ground between humans and whale-kind so as to share thoughts and language between us? And how will we recognize when

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          All previous projects have been guided by data that has already been tagged by us and nudged in what we consider "correct" directions when it seems to go astray.

          No, it hasn't. There is a large field of unsupervised learning. This effort plans to make use of it.

          • So perhaps you care to explain how this field addresses the valid points raised in the comment you replied to.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

              If you mean:

              "And how will we recognize when ML is getting correct outcomes versus not?"

              then there are a variety of unsupervised techniques to do this. Typically internal consistency is an important component.

              One general approach is to train something like a variational auto-encoder. Your input signal gets transformed into an encoded representation (an embedding), then decoded back to the original signal. The system is designed so that the embedding is subject to restrictions: usually it's sparse, so the ori

      • Re:Great. Who will tell it it is wrong? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Mister Transistor ( 259842 ) on Thursday April 22, 2021 @07:42AM (#61300246) Journal

        AC: His Eyes Opened

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by adrn01 ( 103810 )
        I wonder if dolphins and whales might be using glyphs of a sort. If a click going out returns a lot of info, if a click could then be made containing a subset of that by way of referring to the original object, perhaps?
        • That is what I wondered too. To a human the slight differences will all sound the same, but to a creature that is uses the information that an echo tells them about an object/location - putting the fine details in a sound/click lets them tell another of them what they saw/detected already.

      • Yeah, so same test: can you round-trip a translation?

        Translation Party [translationparty.com] does this with English - Japanese to find the equilibrium translation; it's become much more boring over the years as translation improves, but can still find some funny phrases.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

        Or perhaps they mainly speak in complex metaphors of ancient legends.

        Shamu and Kalina in the ocean.
        Shamu and Kalina at Seaworld.
        The beast of Orlando!
        Seaworld, when the walls fell!
        Shamu and Kalina in the ocean.

  • "Project CETI"? (Score:3)

    by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Thursday April 22, 2021 @07:21AM (#61300200)
    I'm getting strong ST IV:Voyage Home vibes from that. Or was the "CETI" [wikipedia.org] pun implied already in that film? In retrospect, I've never thought of that for some reason.

  • Transparent aluminum and we can finally get rid of those snobbish jerks from the future.

  • Obligatory sperm whale quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by dromgodis ( 4533247 ) on Thursday April 22, 2021 @07:56AM (#61300278)

    "Ah ! What’s happening?

    Er, excuse me, who am I?

    Hello?

    Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?

    What do I mean by who am I?

    [...]
    "

    Next the scientists will decode the petunias.

    • Naw, we know what the petunias are always saying:
      "Oh no, not again..."

    • C'mon folks. This is a rather hilarious reference to a science fiction novel.

      Modded Insightful? Really? As if this quote from Douglas Adams somehow greatly enhanced your sperm whale vocabulary, or educated you on the great speakers of the sea?

      Laugh a little. Helps keep the sticks out of your ass.

      • C'mon folks. This is a rather hilarious reference to a science fiction novel.

        Modded Insightful? Really?

        Yes. Insightful grants karma. Funny does not. Slashdot mods frequently mix the two, to give the poster some karma as well as acknowledge the humor.

        With your ID, you should already know this.

  • "Get off my lawn!"

  • ... miss shark, miss shark, miss shark...

  • Ellen Degeneris?

  • "We've been trying to reach you about your vehicle's extended warranty..."

  • "He learnt to communicate with birds and discovered that their conversation was fantastically boring. It was all to do with wind speed, wing spans, power-to-weight ratios and a fair bit about berries. Unfortunately, he discovered, once you have learnt birdspeak you quickly come to realize that the air is full of it the whole time, just inane bird chatter. There is no getting away from it."

    Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

  • People are just too jaded. Learning Whale, and consequently other animal languages will open up vast new areas for advertising and sales. For instance just imagine, all those naked fish will be begging and clamouring for the latest fall fashions. Evian will have a field day! Just imagine what a whale sized Apple Watch could bring in for revenue. (Please note slight cynical viewpoint)

  • Press 1 for Spanish, 2 for English, 3 for Whalish. Or is that Welsh?

  • What if we learn to speak with the whales and they turn our to be articulate but vehemently hate us because we have engaged in genocide against their species. Will that change our behavior at all? Would we be willing to engage in reparations?

  • "plan to use machine learning to try to decode what Sperm whales say to one another. "

    Spermy, how about we fuck up those scientists with their microphones?

  • Just saw this via Twitter: Conversation with a gorilla via sign language:
    http://flum.blogspot.com/1998/... [blogspot.com]
    Sample:
    HaloMyBaby:
    In case you're curious, here's how Koko is able to participate in this chat: Dr. Patterson is signing the questions from the online audience to Koko and a typist is entering for her. Rulucky asks: Do you like to chat with other people?
    LiveKOKO:
    fine nipple
    DrPPatrsn:
    Nipple rhymes with people, she doesn't sign people per se, she was trying to do a "sounds like..."

  • "They will lean heavily on advances in artificial intelligence, which can now translate one human language to another without help from a Rosetta Stone, or key" Ah, I guess bing and google translate aren't using that AI, or if it does, good luck with nothing, as it can't even decently translate asian languages to english, certainly not in correct meaning.

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