UC Berkeley scientists hail breakthrough in decoding whale communication

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/scientists-breakthrough-decoding-whales-21184413.php

by daegloe • 8 months ago

10 6 8 months ago

sfgate.com

dmix• 8 months ago

The article linked within has audio examples from the study

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ai-new-sperm-whale-commu...

Also some critiques from three other scientists

The comparison to vowels is “completely nonsense,” says Luke Rendell, a marine biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who has studied sperm whales for more than 30 years. “There’s no evidence that the animals are responding in any way to this [new pattern].”
He notes that each sperm whale click isn’t just one tone but several in a row, and this can introduce ripples into a recording that aren’t present in the original. These ripples can look a lot like the pattern the CETI team found. He thinks the researchers didn’t do enough to rule out the possibility of recording artifacts.

mnky9800n• 8 months ago

What does it mean to “introduce ripples into a recording”?

DaveZale• 8 months ago

they're saying...

"silly humans!"

burnt-resistor• 8 months ago

They're simultaneously asking extraterrestrials to accelerate the timetable of the planetary invasion.

ggm• 8 months ago

The critique reminds me of how I and others complain about AI proponents: using a word like "vowel" to discuss a specific pattern detected in whale recordings is intentional or unintentional rei-ification which tends to the argument "it's speech" when really all you can say at this point is, there is a statistically valid pattern which can be discriminated. It's function, association with other concepts and "vowel-dom" is imputed, not proved.

Just like AI "hallucinations" and what this says about belief in AGI.

hulitu• 8 months ago

UC Berkeley scientists hail breakthrough in decoding whale communication

In Mars Attacks it didn't go well.

UC Berkeley scientists hail breakthrough in decoding whale communication

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