Can Humans Finally Talk to Whales? Scientists Use AI to Try Decoding Whale Songs

Ever since the Songs of the Humpback Whale was released, humans have become obsessed with the song of whales even though no one had any idea what these marine mammals were trying to say.

But what if there is a way to understand their language? Scientists today are trying to use artificial intelligence (AI) to decode the whistles, clicks, and whines of sperm whales. They aim to teach the AI to speak to whales in their own language to someday establish communication with them.

Decoding Whale Songs

According to Hakai Magazine, Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) is leading the interspecies communication program that has one goal of decoding whale songs to establish their language that will hopefully someday help humans communicate with them.

IFL Science shared that this idea started when computer scientist Shafi Goldwasser and marine biologist David Gruber were discussing the similarities between sperm whale clicks and the Morse code. Michael Bronstein, another computer scientist who later joined them, said that AI could be used to analyze sperm whale recordings to identify patterns of their speech.

Their research begs the question of when commi=unication constitutes language and whether it exists outside humans. Dr. Valerie Vergara said in an interview with IFL Science that young whales are known to exhibit their ow beluga "babble talk" as they try to learn vocalization from their parents and wider pod. Decoding these whale songs could be pivotal in establishing whether these songs constitute a conversation.

Since decoding whale songs require processing a lot of data, researchers thought of using AI, such as GPT-3 that can effectively finish an unfinished sentence by learning what would come next, like how an autocorrect works. But this also means that GPT-3 could create mistakes.

Researchers said that the next step is to bulk up the number of sperm whale recordings to adequately train AI's neural network. But there is still one problem: how will the unsuspecting whales receive this new technology?

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Implications of Using Robots to Communicate With Whales

As The Next Web (TNW) reported, there are huge implications for using robots to communicate to whales, not to mention that they are not exactly best friends with these marine mammals.

However, the better science understands the language of animals and how they communicate with each other, the better humans would also understand the world. Some people suggest that scientists could uncover ideas about human language, but that would mean creating a Rosetta Stone for whale language.

Still, the question of how will whales interpret this technology looms since they usually dive deep down in areas where they can not see each other and rely only on their complex language to know where food, threats, and each other are, which are crucial for their survival.

It could be possible that whales could recognize the voice as something unlike them and actively ignore it. However, what if they believe it? What if the words scientists are shouting that think are cool could actually be some end of the world rhetoric for whales that tell them to swim for their life?

Nonetheless, it is believable that Project CETI will use this technology for whale conservation to save their population that is slowly dwindling in numbers.