How to Speak Whale - with a Nod to Big Data and Large Language Models

How to Speak Whale for Interspecies Internet 

A 40 minute lecture and ensuing discussion by Tom Mustill on his experiences translating the world of animal communications through film, communications and emerging technologies.

In 2015, wildlife filmmaker Tom Mustill was whale-watching when a humpback breached onto his kayak and nearly killed him. After a video clip of the event went viral, scientists used AI to discover who the whale was, reconstruct its life story and demonstrate that it wasn't trying to harm him. Fascinated, Tom spent 4 years meeting the pioneers in a new age of discovery, whose cutting-edge developments in natural science and technology are taking us to the brink of decoding animal communication using remote sensors, big data and machine intelligence.

In this talk Tom discussing his personal experience documenting the natural world and the emerging technologies that have allowed us to progress animal communications. He questions how can we protect the living world from these new powers and make sure that if we make contact through technology we do not harm or exploit them?

This video is part of the Interspecies Conversations lecture series. A regular online lecture series that invites leading professors, scientists, researchers, and students to share and present their work around interspecies communication and approaches to deciphering the signals of other animals. It aims to showcase emerging ideas and discoveries and include open discussions where the community can join the conversation with ideas and feedback.

One of the books I read this summer was How to Speak Whale by Tom Mustill.  I'd seen a PBS documentary (Nature: The Whale Detective) about some of this story, but the focus was on identifying the whale who breeched onto his kayak.  He learned to not take it personally and realized it was a young-ish whale who didn't mean to hurt him -- The whales were busy feeding and the humans got in the way, but I don't remember the focus of that show being so much about interspecies communication or the blossoming of data science.   That's a big focus in his book.  And now with advances in AI, machine learning and large language models, we might actually make some progress on interspecies communication!  Maybe ...  

Here are some of the apps and projects mentioned in the book and the talk above:

Project CETI  - What would it mean to understand what whales are saying?

The HappyWhale Database is a crowd-sourced by whale lovers and tourists (not just scientists) to identify and track whales worldwide.

Merlin Bird ID App - Identifies birds in your environs by listening

Picture This Plant Identifier App - Identifies plants when you take a photo