What does it actually mean to translate a language that has never been written down or spoken in air, whose holders are ancient ocean denizens, and may not even carry concepts we'd recognize as our own? That's the question sitting at the center of this episode, and those answering it have formed one of the more radical partnerships in science today: Project CETI and MOTH. CETI is a collective of fifty-plus scientists attempting to listen to and translate the communication of sperm whales.
MOTH is a legal collective working to bring that science before courts, in the hope that whales might be granted something like legal standing and rights. In a barn in the English countryside, David Gruber and César Rodríguez-Garavito walk us through what it takes to listen this closely to another species, and whether this new convergence of human, animal, and machine intelligence could spark a watershed moment for conservation and consciousness.
What we'll cover:
The sperm whale's anatomy of perception, acoustic vision, and what it's like to navigate a world of inky darkness through sound
The deep evolutionary kinship between humans and whales, and what their convergent vowel-like sounds suggest about the origins of language
How Project CETI uses machine learning to find phonetic structure and contextual meaning in whale codas
The legal arguments emerging from this research, from the right not to suffer to the right to a cultural life
A remarkable multi-whale birth event — and what it reveals about coordination, kinship, and social roles among whales
The ethical guardrails (NACT) proposed for AI-assisted animal communication technology, and the risks of getting this wrong
Whether this new convergence of human, animal, and machine intelligence could spark a watershed moment for conservation and consciousness
Episode Website Link: https://www.lifeworld.earth/episodes-blog/whalelexiconsceti
Links:
Project CETI
More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) Program at NYU
Nature: Description of a collaborative sperm whale birth and shifts in coda vocal styles during key events
What if We Understood what Animals are Saying? The Legal Impact of AI-assisted Studies of Animal Communication.”
He Whakaputanga Moana: The first Declaration recognizing whales as sentient beings with inherent rights
From Orbit to Intimacy
The Crimson: Are Whales Trying to Tell Us Something?
Time: Researchers are Using AI to Understand what Animals are Saying
Lifeworlds Episode: The Sounds of Life: Bioacoustics, A.I. and Ethics – with Karen Bakker
Lewis Mumford: Tecnics and Civilisation
From Orbit to Intimacy
Listening to whales: input requested!!
Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.
Credits: Sperm Whale Sound (Project CETI);
Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock, Ellie Kidd & The Rising by Tryad CCPL.
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