Scientists Have Reported a Breakthrough In Understanding Whale Language::Researchers have identified new elements of whale vocalizations that they propose are analogous to human speech, including vowels and pitch.
Sokath, his eyes uncovered.
Not only did the AI predict elements of whale vocalizations already thought to be meaningful, such as clicks, but it also singled out acoustic properties.
This is an amazing use of machine learning models.
Can’t wait for them to tell us to stop being fuckheads and ruining the planet
NOC’s vocalizations were recorded and studied by a team of biologists from the National Marine Mammal Foundation (NMMF) led by Sam Ridgway. In 1984, Ridgway and others at the NMMF began to hear peculiar sounds coming from the whale and dolphin enclosure. They were reminiscent of two people talking in the distance, the words just beyond the limit of comprehension.[5] Later, a diver working in the enclosure came to the surface after he heard someone cry “out, out, out!”[1] After he asked his colleagues “Who told me to get out?”, they realized it had been NOC.
Imagine if we managed to make a translator for the speech of an animal, knowing what they say and being able to say something back. Literally speaking with animals. That would have been so amazing and revolutionizing.
Honestly? We’d just fuck it all up, and find some way to exploit it.
If they could, the first words they speak to us would likely be akin to “Fuck you!”, or “Just what the fuck exactly is wrong with you people?”
I mean, would animals necessarily make a distinction between humans and other types of predatory or dangerous animal, understand exactly what our impact on their habitat actually is (something like warming temperatures would be hard to associate with us if you didn’t know about human co2 emissions or the greenhouse effect, for instance), and understand that our technology is an extension of our control and not some other, strange symbiotic creature? Considering whales have no technology of their own and therefore probably very little understanding of the concept, they might not realize things like ships and fishing boats are entirely our doing and not some massive surface creature that eats all the fish, that land dwelling creatures like us live on top of like barnacles. And assuming they do understand what our ships are, they might hate or fear us from passed down stories of whalers, or encounters with those whaling ships that still exist, but would they think of us much differently than how they’d think of other predators to whales, like orcas?
Yeah, exploitation like this is a big concern in the digital bioacoustics community with groups like Earth Species Project.
Here is an elephant translator:
https://www.helloinelephant.com/
I dont think its great or anything, a bit of a gimmick. Really, the most decoded animal language is probably prairie dogs, but I’ve not heard of anyone trying to make a translator for it.
Hell yeah, I hope it works for orcas too so I can thank the ones that have been trashing the yachts.
I’m learning how to sail right now. It would be great to have that sorted out before I make my way by Gibraltar.
So what I’m hearing is they can literally talk to each other in a way that we do and we still kill them constantly.
We kill humans constantly too, and we probably obliterated the rest of the hominins also. I’m just saying we have a chequered track record.
While I always love a Mitchell and Webb reference, I can say I don’t think so. I think the book Humanity by Rutger Bregman is a good reminder that we are mostly good.
This is big news! We’ve got a lemmy community specifically about Digital Bioacoustics (technology and animal communication) for anyone interested.
