Title: How AI is helping to decipher animal communication
Author: ABC News

Transcript:
there's a lot of discussion about the
use of artificial intelligence in
virtually every industry right now but
especially in the world of science my
next guest is using AI to decode whale
language and believes his research could
one day take Humanity into extra
terrestrial territory his work is part
of National Geographics November issue
on artificial intelligence so I'm joined
Now by National Geographic Explorer
David Gruber David it's great to have
you on hey it's a pleasure to be here
Whit thanks for inviting me of course so
talk to me first about how AI can lead
to breakthroughs in our understanding of
nature well I mean most of the AI that
we've developed is is geared towards
ourself you know we're we're um we're
analyzing all these books the entire
internet but when you look at another
species like a non-human there actually
hadn't been that much information so
that's where this the organization that
I run project seti a nonprofit um we
have been starting since 2020 working
off the island of Dominica where there
are resident um um sperm whales and
we've been collecting the largest
non-human database and put together a
team of over 50 scientists across eight
disciplines all to listen to and
translate what sperm oils are saying it
really is fascinating we're looking at
some of the video here so so so why
sperm whales and what have you found so
far why sperm whales I mean sperm whales
are just honored to work with these
creatures they've got the biggest brain
of any animal as we know of on Earth or
in the universe 18 pounds um they they
speak in a click like communication
called kodas which actually turn out to
be very useful for AI to decode it's
almost like a one and a zero and um
their their language goes back you know
tens of millions of years so what we
found so far is we've been kind of just
working and building up the fundamental
building blocks and in in um in May of
this year we released the first sperm
whale phonetic alphabet um and in a few
more months we'll be releasing on the
sperm Wells having vowels so we're
really just putting together the pieces
and you can't understand a non-human
communication system without kind of
knowing the fundamentals so that's where
we're at incredible the the sperm whale
alphabet I'll definitely have to check
that out so let's fast forward to the
future a little bit here because um we
understand that you believe this
research might one day perhaps help
humans communicate with
extraterrestrials explain how that could
work this is like science fiction nerd
brain I'm all in tell me about it well
I'm glad you're all in I mean we we
named ourselves project C in homage to
the seti the search for extraterrestrial
intelligence and we see ourselves as
like intraterrestrial um and we're
looking like right here on this planet
we have whales swimming in the ocean you
know still hundreds of thousands of
sperm whes um that are communicating in
this click like communication that we
don't understand and if we can't
translate um animals that are on our
planet like how are we going to go out
you know several light years and
translate life if and when we do find it
so we really see this as like the first
step um and it's a way to look inward
but to gain almost the training wheels
like if we can't do this right here in
the ocean um it'll be really tough to do
it a couple light years out and um so
yeah we're excited to kind of play this
um this fundamental role in even
thinking of theoretically how would we
translate an alien non-human
Communication System wow I love it I
don't know if you read the science
fiction series the three-body problem
but I feel like there should have been a
section on AI communication with the
aliens in there um David Gruber thank
you so much for your time we appreciate
it and and looking forward to uh
following through on your research uh
again for more on this story you can
visit natgeo.com National Geographic is
a joint venture between the National
Geographic society and Disney