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

Recording the feats of the emperor is already miles beyond what whales probably do and I d go as far as to call that recorded History,since the goal of writing is to allow the dead to speak to the future, a megalomaniac endeavour only overly inflated brains could think about.

After seeing that poor monkey spending his life learning sign language just to ask for more bananas and never asking a tough question, Im a bit pesimistic.

I think your entire post is hugely optimistic despite the negative overtone! The fact that other people see there are these important and fundamental questions that can be addressed by this nascent field gives me hope that this won't be another one off attempt like so many before. I'm very hopeful that it can snowball due to the hype around machine learning even if I'm personally skeptical that machine learning is a particularly fruitful avenue.

I would expect the vast majority of their comms to be :

Nice water over here

Loads of food here

I'm down to F, anyone else?

Do we really have any evidence that suggests it'll be anything else?

My less pessimistic (dare I say realistic, ha!) take is that whales will have little of note to say. Complex communication (in contrast to "simple" communication like the evocation of emotions, e.g. fear, anger, sadness, etc.) does seem to require the biological need for it, otherwise the genes that control factors that manifest it ("depth" and richness of sense, proclivity for specific mental models, etc.) do not get reinforced and "bred" into the animal.

The other side to this is that communication is mostly non-verbal. For example, chimpanzees, perhaps the most communicationally-advanced animals, besides us, do have a few different "verbal" signals they use. But there is also a richness of non-verbal communication (body language, facial expression, using their hands, etc.). And then these signals have to be also interpreted by other chimpanzees, thus training them to develop new mental models about these signals (and leading way to complex communication).

Whereas all whales really have are clicks, whistles, and "pulsed calls." Along with a tail with much less dexterity than a hand (but is still used in communicating amongst themselves). The richness of their communication is much less than the chimp, so so far it seems they can only use it for rudimentary purposes (mating, hunting/intelligent organization and navigation, and figuring out who is part of the "tribe"/pod).

But in that vein, they're still closer to a chimp than they are to us. Humans have evolved such complex mental models for the world and other humans within it, that all animals are basically on the same, much lower level in comparison.

On a less relevant topic, whales are social animals that stick together, make close bonds with family, and do have a certain "culture" that gets passed down, and is constantly morphing a la "whale songs." It almost pains me to think about what emotions a whale would feel (if it even does) about friends and family that have been hunted to death.

That was the intent!

“You’re telling me a shrimp fried this rice?!”

Your point stands, but I want something wholly different from that. I want the equivalent of the LHC for cross species communication. You're telling me to go do some communing with physics, because we've already got some good textbooks on quantum mechanics.

I’ve read various stats about the human brain using a surprising percentage of our overall energy budget. I wonder how much energy a whale brain uses (overall and per kg)? While it’s not the only relevant stat, TDP does provide a clue as to processing power.

Agreed! But afaik the neuron process "node" across species is not so different. The relevant metaphor I would think is humans have pcie and a large register count while many (all?) others are still on pata and register starved. Maybe a real biologist can come in with more facts and less bad metaphors

I think the actual investment is shockingly little. Even compared to a moderately sized zoo the investment is tiny. It's like a dozen individual people trying over the past five decades.

I think it's a decent enough guess and I'd give better then even odds on it.

Whales have the capacity to communicate. Stories are more effective than unadorned facts at being remembered (for humans anyways). Remembering important facts is a huge advantage in almost any context. The biggest jump imo is the second one, but I find it unlikely that whales would have a radically different memory storage and retrieval model than humans

There's no software in a whale's brain, or in a human's brain.

As has been discussed in a couple of articles linked on HN recently, it might not even be useful to think about brain function as computation.

We do, actually, for dolphins at least. Researchers did an experiment where dolphins had to coordinate their actions (push 2 buttons together) without seeing each other. So they coordinated their actions acoustically by communicating when they should push the buttons.

Personally I want to know if they still tell tales of the hero whale who killed one of the ships in 1820: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship)

Maybe! But I find that an awfully self centered view. I imagine humans (boats?) will play a (perhaps significant) aspect in their vision of the world. But I'd be surprised if it was any bigger than e.g. malaria is for humans.

Game Theory would probably say that it is logical, though at the end self-defeating.

Usually the species is hunted for something valuable, and that means that the species becoming rarer translates to higher prices. So the people who successfully kill the very last specimens will get rich from them; an absolutely logical motivation, even if it has disastrous consequences down the line. If you can get ten million dollars for the very last whale on Earth, it is better than spending your life hunting some ubiquitous not-whales for 5000 dollars each.

Of course, the end result is bad - the entire industry disappears - but so it is in the Prisoner's Dilemma.

I don't see any logical issue with that.

Logic makes no moral judgements, and also logic doesn't care about the future, if it doesn't include the invididual.

(Here logic is also a stand-in for "maximizing benefit").

If one/a group hunts whales to extintion and makes a huge profit (say, enough to retire), they would be logically sound (if morally bankrupt) to not care less if there are no whales left.

It is logical if the species poses an existential threat. Consider our efforts to eradicate certain diseases caused by bacteria.

There are many (maybe all) examples from nature in which resources will get consumed until they are gone. "Logic" has nothing to do with it. That doesn't mean we should hunt species to extinction, but its definitely a natural thing to do.

Then the whales will learn not to trust anything we say.

Happened to indigenous people in the Americas.

We've always been able to talk with those humans though and most of the times we fight them for their resources, not their bodies.

He's saying we are making so much noise in the ocean that it's hard for them to go about their business - which is absolutely true. Military sonar might even be partly to blame for whale strandings.

Please refrain from knee-jerk reactions to short comments containing "bad words".

The comment is actually substantive if you think about it for a second. Heuristics are right most of the time until they aren't.

Also see pg essay "Succinctness is Power": http://www.paulgraham.com/power.html

Wouldn't simple sentences with the structure subject-verb-object be universal to any rational speaker?

A lion could say "I want food", or "I see dog", or "dog eats food".

I don't see why a lion's worldview could be so different from ours that this wouldn't be possible.

I can easily believe that's actually true.

Dogs would probably be equally disappointed to learn that they only thing we glean from how they smell is that they need a shower!

There seems to be a lot of wishful thinking in the research. The article mentions the Great Tits having 2 calls for alarm, which if made out of order have no effect, and calling that grammar. You could also call it a single call. Grammar to me means being able to construct new meaning from parts. While interesting and maybe useful, if this sort of research bears fruit I believe lots of people waxing lyrical over how amazing it will be to talk with the animals are going to be rather disappointed. Basic conversation requires a vocabulary in the hundreds, and so far it seems we are looking at word-equivalents maybe in the dozens, in the more capable species. And then you have all the concepts we take for granted except in infants, such as 'I' and 'you' and self awareness.

TIL - I expected that the chimpanzee sign language experiments would be a counterexample, but apparently the (IMHO surprising) lack of question usage was one of their outcomes.

This is because humans are the only living thing which feels inadequate enough to ask questions. No other creature feels like it lacks knowledge.

And yes, I'll take it a step further: the reason science glorifies questions is because science is human beings systematically mass-hypnotising each other into greater and greater inadequacy.

You ever notice how you never get enough answers in science? Every "answer" you get scientifically only seems to bring about more and more questions? We call it "scientific curiosity" and pretend to marvel at it, but come on, how shallow is that.

What every other living creature (and every newborn human) intrinsically knows is that it knows all it needs to know. And that whenever it needs to know more, it will know it. That's it. There is no scientific process, no philosophical inquiries, no questioning. No doubt. No lack.

Allegedly the famous parrot Alex asked what color he is. But the whole line of research is doubted by a lot of people.