[HN Gopher] Attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with AI, ... ___________________________________________________________________ Attempting to interpret sperm whale clicks with AI, then talk back Author : Vindl Score : 97 points Date : 2021-10-31 14:15 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.hakaimagazine.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.hakaimagazine.com) | booleandilemma wrote: | The idea of finally talking to something we've been killing for | resources for centuries is kinda weird. | candlemas wrote: | I can't wait for Moby Dick to be translated into spermwhalese. | ceejayoz wrote: | We should probably pick "whoops, our bad" as one of the early | translation goals. | Shorel wrote: | Then the whales will learn not to trust anything we say. | | Happened to indigenous people in the Americas. | ceejayoz wrote: | That seems like it _should_ be lesson #1 when dealing with | humans; that we lie, effortlessly. | ncmncm wrote: | "White Man speak with forked tongue". | cute_boi wrote: | But now these clever people will bring incentives etc to | entice these creatures. Just depends on how much economic | incentive these whales bring to the table. | | Happens to many politicians by rich/powerful people across | the world. | riffraff wrote: | we've done that with people for a very long time. | | Even today, there are reports of african pygmies still being | treated as slaves or hunted for both sport and cannibalism[0] | | [0] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Pygmies#Enslavement,_c... | coldtea wrote: | Not that different to talking to colonized people and ex-slave | descendants... | hirundo wrote: | Only the "finally". We've been talking to other humans and then | killing them for resources for a very long time. | johnchristopher wrote: | 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. | DarknessFalls wrote: | To hunt a species to extinction is not logical. | | Edit: Because the topic is about communicating with Whales and | my response was to a comment about hunting them, I thought it | would be appropriate to reference something Spock said in Star | Trek IV. Colloquially known as "The one with the whales". | version_five wrote: | 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. | slowmovintarget wrote: | One of the things that separates many humans from other | kinds of animals is the ability to choose against instinct. | To hold a hot cup for a little longer, enduring the pain so | we don't drop it and break it. There are even some | arguments that consciousness evolved to allow humans to do | exactly that sort of thing; contradict hard-wired impulses. | | That we are so terrible at modesty of consumption in groups | is the real tragedy. | st_goliath wrote: | > "Logic" has nothing to do with it. | | I guess the GP post is simply a direct quote from "Star | Trek IV: The Voyage Home" (where IIRC Spock says something | along those lines while he and Kirk visit a 20th century | museum). | | Whales, their extinction and communicating with them was | central to the plot of that film. | | EDIT: Ok, I looked it up. This exact quote is in the movie, | _verbatim_ , in the scene I mentioned. At around 00:47:39 | DarknessFalls wrote: | Correct. I think we're entering an era where Star Trek is | largely forgotten. | | As opposed to two decades ago (right column): | https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/icq-2001 | slowmovintarget wrote: | Aye, it's a 35 year old movie. Which is stunning for me. | I recall going to the theater to see it with my parents. | It was the last movie we all saw together. | inglor_cz wrote: | 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. | oblak wrote: | Wow, new heights in game theory nonsense | | I know you're simply explaining the logic but it's still a | psychopath's logic | mc32 wrote: | Not really. This happens pretty frequently. Hunting | species to extinction, cutting down trees for fuel, etc. | oblak wrote: | Well, I didn't say we have a shortage of psychos, did I? | | Hunting the white rhinos to extinction is totally fine. | It's just game theory, you guys. | [deleted] | b3morales wrote: | Well, the Tragedy of the Commons can also be modeled in | game theoretic terms. This is logical only in the | extremely oversimplified given scope. If you ignore all | externalities (possibly including your own future needs), | resource exploitation can _appear_ to be a rational | course of action. | | But ignoring them, I would say, is not in fact logical or | rational. | mistrial9 wrote: | some mystics have said plainly for a long while that logic- | reason by itself enables insane conclusions and perhaps | actions. I agree. | coldtea wrote: | 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. | User23 wrote: | It's a shame that the explicit study of logic, ethics, and | aesthetics isn't really part of the secondary school | curriculum anymore. Everyone should be able to tell whether | a problem falls in the domain of logic or ethics. | coldtea wrote: | Yeah. And even "maximizing benefit/utility" is not logic | (I went with that, since at best, it's what many mean by | "makes logical sense"). | | Logic could as well be used perfectly well for minimizing | benefit, it's just a tool for forming and evaluating | syllogisms based on a set of axioms. | SquibblesRedux wrote: | It is logical if the species poses an existential threat. | Consider our efforts to eradicate certain diseases caused by | bacteria. | ncmncm wrote: | Viruses, anyway. | | Nobody who knows basic biology has any illusions about the | prospect of driving even a single species of bacteria to | extinction. | | And anyway Russia probably still stockpiles literal tons of | smallpox virus frozen underground in Siberian laboratories. | 1cvmask wrote: | Most indigenous tribes were hunted to extinction by colonial | settlers. Now some of the descendants of the colonial | settlers subsume their heritage to get preferential access to | colleges and jobs. | drewolbrich wrote: | Could this technology be used to communicate with teenagers? | dazc wrote: | Does the teenager want to be communicated with though? | Misdicorl wrote: | God I cannot wait to talk to whales. Their oral histories must be | incredible. People have fantasized about communicating with | extraterrestrials for ages. I don't understand why we haven't | invested significant resources in trying to communicate with the | other animals on our own planet. What an incredibly weird and non | translatable experience it will be to (finally?!) start this | adventure with whales. | | Tangent time. If you do a cursory search of how smart whales are, | you'll get nonsense about how humans are much smarter because the | size of the brain isn't relevant, its the ratio of the brain size | to the body size. But somehow that argument doesn't apply to | squirrels. Or to a 7 foot human vs. a 4.5 foot human. Whales | probably aren't as smart as humans, but its due to the | environmental pressures selecting for intelligence, not raw | capability. Whales have the capability to _far_ outstrip humans | in intelligence (if you accept that neuron count and neuron | connections are the raw inputs). Lets get some whale engineers | working on the hard problems please. | WalterBright wrote: | Brain size may not necessarily correlate with intelligence | because it isn't the number of neurons, it's the organization | and optimization of them. | | Just like we make much more powerful CPU chips in the same | volume of silicon as before. | | And it could be that it just isn't necessary for whales to | optimize brain density, like it is for humans and crows. | Misdicorl wrote: | 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 | taneq wrote: | 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. | tsol wrote: | I mean.. hate to be a party pooper, but just because we created | a the equivalent of gpt3 for whales, does that mean we can do | anything useful? Like talking to whales.. we haven't even | established how their language works. | | What language even is, is a good question. I read it once | demonstrated as this; some species of monkey has a specific | call they do when they see a panther, and it results in all the | monkeys who hear it to run up their trees. Now what does this | call mean? It could mean "jaguar alert!", pointing to a very | specific concept-- a certain animal is here and we all know | they're dangerous. | | It could also mean "I'm scared!", and maybe it's just monkey | see monkey do. It could also mean something more abstract, like | a blood curdling scream-- there's no one thing that it means, | but as humans we instinctively know that people don't scream | like that unless something legitimately awful is happening. So | maybe the call communicates emotion rather than an intellectual | concept-- it's a call of fear that makes other monkeys who hear | it also scared. | | Just breaking down what animal language even _is_, is a | challenge. I'm not optimistic on hearing any oral histories of | whales, or even that they record history. I mean humans only | started recording history for its own sake like 2000 years ago | with herodotus. Before then we have tablets to keep track of | stock, letters, and murals which were often made to depict the | strength of the reigning emperor and the foes he vanquished. So | maybe if we talk to whales it'll be a little like if aliens | came to ancient Egypt to talk to the pharaoh; we'll just get a | dictator whale telling us about all the other whales he's | killed and how he's the greatest.. haha probably not that, | though. | klipt wrote: | > Their oral histories must be incredible. | | Everything was idyllic in the before times. Then the human | ships arrived and ruined everything. Some of them killed us. | Others ignored us but polluted the ocean with noise so we | couldn't hear each other's whale songs anymore. | Misdicorl wrote: | 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. | TheOtherHobbes wrote: | There have been a number of Orca attacks on yachts in the | Mediterranean and the Gulf of Cadiz/Portugal area recently. | | Perhaps they're hungry. Perhaps they're pissed. No one | knows. | | Historically, orca attacks on humans - outside of captivity | - have been _very_ rare. | blacksmith_tb wrote: | I would say that's lowballing it considerably[1]. Whaling | nearly drove sperm whales to extinction until they were | protected in the 1970s. | | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_whale#Relationship_w | ith_... | Misdicorl wrote: | Fair enough | aahortwwy wrote: | > If a lion could speak, we could not understand him. | franky47 wrote: | > Lets get some whale engineers working on the hard problems | please. | | Somehow I pictured whales as the engineers in this sentence. It | makes it even better. | Misdicorl wrote: | That was the intent! | forgotmypw17 wrote: | You can do it today with other species. We are lucky to still | be surrounded by all kinds of animals: mammals, birds, and even | insects. | | Of course, in order to talk, you have to spend a lot of time | listening first. And what they say cannot often be translated | to human talk. | | In order to make friends, you have to give first. Our society | teaches us to stay away from nature and leave it be, so you | have to break past that. | | The rewards are breathtaking and totally worth the effort. | Misdicorl wrote: | 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. | PicassoCTs wrote: | They will sing us the song of the great holocaust of the 1800s, | of the day the metal surface whales turned the skies red and | nothing could save them. | lovecg wrote: | 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) | peebz wrote: | Perhaps they should call the system 'Gavag-AI" | spoonjim wrote: | Gosh why can't we leave them alone. This is like impersonating | someone's spouse with a deepfaked voice and then having an | intimate conversation with them. | quotha wrote: | Guarantee they just want us to shut the fuck up. | ceejayoz wrote: | Not sure why this is getting downvoted; it's probably very | true. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_mammals_and_sonar | | https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/science/oceans-whales-noi... | | > Some scientists say the noises from air guns, ship sonar and | general tanker traffic can cause the gradual or even outright | death of sea creatures, from the giants to the tiniest -- | whales, dolphins, fish, squid, octopuses and even plankton. | Other effects include impairing animals' hearing, brain | hemorrhaging and the drowning out of communication sounds | important for survival, experts say. | | > A 2017 study, for example, found that a loud blast, softer | than the sound of a seismic air gun, killed nearly two-thirds | of the zooplankton in three-quarters of a mile on either side. | Tiny organisms at the bottom of the food chain, zooplankton | provide a food source for everything from great whales to | shrimp. Krill, a tiny crustacean vital to whales and other | animals, were especially hard hit, according to one study. | dang wrote: | Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker | News? You've been doing it repeatedly, and we're hoping for | something different here. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | plutonorm wrote: | 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. | throwaway05112 wrote: | 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 | dang wrote: | It has to do with comment quality, not bad words. | unanswered wrote: | > really transformational cultural moments | | Prediction: an astonishingly large portion of animal utterances | will have to do with reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that | humans pour into the atmosphere. You heard it here first. | qayxc wrote: | Aye, turns out the whales are close friends with Koko and agree | with everything she, um... said. | franky47 wrote: | Does the AI training dataset involve dropping a whale from great | heights ? | | "Ahhh! Woooh! What's happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What's | my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I?" | | https://www.thecharacterquotes.com/the-whale | ceejayoz wrote: | Whale: "Hey, I found some fish." | | Whale Eliza: "Interesting. How does that make you feel? | | Whale: "What the fuck?" | samirillian wrote: | lol, the opposite of this actually | geenew wrote: | You should look up the Far Side comic where a professor invents | a dog translator. Turns out the only thing dogs say is 'Hey! | Hey! Hey!'. | notahacker wrote: | 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! | kace91 wrote: | Not sure if it's the case with whales, bit as far as I know | there is no recorded use of questions in the animal kingdom - | all communication seems to be enunciative, or orders. Questions | are exclusive to humans... | glogla wrote: | Allegedly the famous parrot Alex asked what color he is. But | the whole line of research is doubted by a lot of people. | PeterisP wrote: | 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. | kace91 wrote: | Yup. I knew it because I fell in a Wikipedia rabbit hole | about animal intelligence not long ago. | | It was very intriguing to me, as someone with no previous | knowledge, how this was assumed to be an only human trait | yet the fact was pretty much glossed over. | | I find fascinating the idea of a step between being stuck | with the information that others emit and being able to and | request arbitrary information at will, being part of what | made us what we are. Once you think about it, it really is | an amazing advantage. | IIAOPSW wrote: | I'm working on a sort-of language as a side project and | have fallen down many of the same rabbit holes that you | have. I don't think questions are one of the key features | that make language special because in the language I'm | working on questions are an emergent property. | | There are two structural words in my language, "propose" | and "tell". From these words you can build complicated | ideas such as lying ("I propose to you: you propose to | him: [malicious plan]. [real plan]."). Asking a question | can be done with "I propose you tell me ...". Instead of | saying "I think", you say something like "I tell myself". | | The feature of language that seems the most surprisingly | powerful is placeholder words. The words like "someone", | "somewhere", "somehow". I call these the entropy words | because they are the words for the information you don't | have. They represent sets of possible things rather than | a literal specific thing. | | "someone moved to Silessia". | | In fact you can generally substitute a set of things | anywhere you would use a literal thing. Any set will do. | For example | | "John/George/Ringo/Paul played in the Beatles." | | Adjectives can be understood as just specifying a set | using set-builder notation. For example "short man" is | "{x in Men such that short(x)}". | | Just from set builder notation, first order logic comes | along for free. I originally thought my language would | need logic words, but this is not the case. | jd115 wrote: | 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. | glogla wrote: | To ask questions, you have to 1) understand that others | have minds 2) understand that there are things you don't | know 3) understand that others might know things you don't | 4) understand that you may ask them and they will tell you. | | That's actually a lot of advanced cognition, even if it | doesn't look that way to us. | rsj_hn wrote: | You must not have a dog waiting for you when you come home | late | jd115 wrote: | Yes, great point - but this is only because the animals | we domesticate have been brainwashed by us humans into | feeling (almost, but never quite) as inadequate as we do. | chippy wrote: | what the eat | gnarbarian wrote: | "If a lion could speak we wouldn't understand him." - | Wittgenstein | | https://ideasandaction.com/if-a-lion-could-speak/ | amelius wrote: | 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. | tsol wrote: | Just to problems off the top of my head; | | In order to understand "I" you have to be able to | understand there's an "other". Do lions understand others | are also fully capable beings? Or are they kinda of | "egotistical" the way a human baby is, where they just | don't really understand the concept of "other people". | | And do they understand what "seeing" is, so that they can | use it in a sentence like that? That's also abstract, it | communicates that you as a being are using your sense of | sight to see a certain thing. Are lions conscious of the | fact that they're seeing, or do they just see things? | amelius wrote: | Well, perhaps the lion has more primitive cognitive | capabilities, but the premise was that we wouldn't | understand the lion (not the other way around). | IIAOPSW wrote: | SVO isn't even universal in human languages. | amelius wrote: | The order is not important. The structure is that the | sentence has a subject, verb and object. | [deleted] | pvaldes wrote: | Hum, is interesting but, trying to talk with sperm whales has its | own special type of risks. The whale reply could kill you. | pvaldes wrote: | We are talking about being shoot with 230 decibels and this | will kill any human diving near the whale. More than 185 Db are | lethal. Is a defense system when startled. | spfzero wrote: | David tried this in the movie Prometheus, didn't work out well. | psukhedelos wrote: | I wonder if this type of research itself might at some point | influence an animal's language. | | In this study, if the researchers were to consistently play a | particular call when a school of fish were nearby I wonder if | younger whales might learn the human produced call to mean a | school of fish. Is it possible this research could instead lead | to us presenting a species with our interpretation of their | language which we would then have a much clearer understanding | of? | | Rather that just us understanding them, I wonder how this might | help them understand us. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-10-31 23:00 UTC)