I had a lot of fun writing this piece and speaking to the people trying to understand what whales, elephants and bats are saying.
With @sam_learner@samjoiner@inari_ta
👉 https://t.co/DbbUnyIHqH
This article follows on from this Tech Tonic podcast with @johnthornhillft and @ManuelaSaragosa - which I recommend listening to if you want to hear more about what it’s like hanging out in the ocean watching sperm whale calves play
https://t.co/3y5nCMTTDp
The same technology that is powering ChatGPT could allow us to reach into the non-human world, and begin to understand — even speak — animal languages, or so researchers hope. Here’s how: https://t.co/R4arntoiDi
This detailed and caring storytelling by @ElizKolbert in @NewYorker about our little team of scientists @ProjectCETI listening to and learning from the little (but growing!) families of whales off #Dominica!
https://t.co/GxFhP3wobJ
The extraordinary @ElizKolbert follows my pal @sgero and his family of sperm whales around the Caribbean learning about efforts to use AI/machine learning to communicate w/whales. And it’s a fantastic story. https://t.co/QZ9nSgRjAj
This was a truly humbling experience and I am overwhelmed in sharing this moment with Unit A.
I've realized I have spent half my life learning from the sperm whales off Dominica and to know these whales is an honor for which I am deeply grateful.
https://t.co/QAquwwZduW
Until fairly recently, the dominant view among scientists was that non-human animals didn’t manifest real intelligence or live in dynamic cultures. Read how @carlsafina and @sgero are challenging this theory in a conversation with journalist @meownderthal
https://t.co/p0AgfTMAS0
@sgero shares what he has learned from the thousands of hours he has spent in the company of sperm whales, including how similar their lives are to our own and how their cultures define their identity, just as ours do. @InsideNatGeo@DomWhale#scicomm https://t.co/OjguoO8yqH
tl;dr: Acoustic properties such as spectral mean or spectral regularity might be informative in sperm whale communication system
Read our preprint: https://t.co/RbiM5tHo3q
With amazing student Andrej Leban @anleb1@berkeleySClab and @sgero@ProjectCETI
Our network learns properties considered meaningful by existing research, such as:
-Number of clicks
-ICI timing
The network also uncovers new acoustic properties that may be meaningful but haven't been hypothesized as such before:
-Spectral mean
-Spectral regularity
How do we approach an unknown communication system?
We train GANs that learn to imitate whale vocalizations and encode information into those vocalizations.
Using CDEV (causal disentanglement with extreme values), we can infer which properties the model encodes as meaningful.
Uncovering the unknowns in sperm whale communication🐳 using deep learning
We introduce a novel interpretability technique (CDEV) that combines generative deep models and causal inference methods.
Our model discovers meaningful properties, both novel and previously hypothesized
As a speaker at #Bioneers2023, I'm excited to join an incredible group of leaders to discuss solutions to today’s most pressing challenges and help us get the big wheels of massive change turning. Join me! Use code BioSpeaker for 15% off: https://t.co/hWefH8n7di