So… what would YOU say to a whale? When you're done here, follow me to Planet Wild to find out how we used drones to drop camera tags on blue whales! www.planetwild.com/besmart/14_2

imagine we translate whale-song/speech and we find out the recording we put on the voyager record is something stupid like an argument

One argument to try to communicate with whales is that it would give us insights into how we could potentially communicate with other intelligent life in the universe. Much like in the movie Arrival, communication is about gathering context, gaining understanding, and making connections. Figuring out how to do that with whales is a tough challenge that we would learn from.

"Sorry for making lamp oil out of most of your ancestors. It was very premium stuff though!"

I certainly hope one day we find a way to properly communicate with at least one species, and then maybe a few more people will start to understand the world we are part of, rather than thinking we exist separate to nature. If you pull back far enough, we're all one big organism on Earth.

I am a retired submarine sonar tech and listening to whale song and other sea creatures was the only thing getting me through those long boring midwatches sometimes

Thank you so much, Joe, for hosting our latest Planet Wild mission! Your passion and insights made the exploration of using cutting-edge technology to study blue whales not only educational but truly captivating. We're thrilled to have had the opportunity to collaborate with you on this fascinating project.

You could just ask your mom what they’re saying

Why should we try to talk with whales: 1. Because it's cool 2. It's a learning experience for communicating with potential extraterrestrial life. 3. Being able to communicate with another species would be a massive boon for conservation efforts. 4. We share this world with them. If they're as intelligent as they seem to be, then we owe it to them to be better roommates, and opening a dialogue would be an excellent first step. 5. (this space reserved for black swan events)

I'm not at all worried/thinking about what if those whale "songs" we sent into space are actually them being like "Help, the hairless monkeys are after me!" and "Save me from these brutal genocidal maniacs!" etc. Nope, not at all... 😬

Seeing this makes me hopeful that we’ll be able to talk to other animals someday! Honestly, I don’t think it’s that far off

Shoutout to the time that Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz taught himself whalesong so that he could insult the macaroni and cheese recipe of a whale!

Prairie Dogs have also been found to have possibly the most complex language after humans, we could try to talk to them as well.

Came back to say thanks for introducing me to Planet Wild. What a great initiative. Their videos are so hopeful. Cool that you’re a part of this

04:26. Also, in 1986, the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home a.k.a. The One With the Whales, made the existence of humpback whales a key for the planet's survival.

I saw the Planet Wild video first,and then I came to your channel. Wow. Both videos are awesome. Thank you so much for your great work

Here's the thing: the question of "why would you talk to a whale?" is effectively the same as "why would you talk to an extra terrestrial?" All of the objections the interviewees made about talking to whales are just as valid when talking about, say, the inhabitants of Proxima Centauri C.

Sperm whale's sonar abilities really blow my mind. They are capable of using sonar as a weapon if they aim it and just blast things with extreme sonar. They also dive super deep and hunt squid in pitch black so sonar is crucial. It's fascinating

17:58 The first whales appeared 50 million years ago, not 150 million years ago.

This is the right use of ai in my opinion. Doing something that advances our understanding of something and doing something we couldn't do on our own

I love Joe and I love Planet Wild. So great to see them collaborate. I watched both videos and I learned so much about the fascinating world of blue whales. 🐳❤

Perhaps using AI to listen and understand whale song is best. I think one of thing they might say is "it's too noisy down here". One of the biggest threats to their long term survival is the steady increase in ambient noise due to shipping, fishing, and petroleum extraction, and their related activities. It stands to reason that they depend on their whale song for communication, navigation, finding food, and responding to threats. That is a challenge to deciphering a language if it exists. Whale songs are probably used for other purposes than speech.

6:28 As an AI researcher, it’s worth pointing out that what the host is asking is exactly what these large language models are. They learn to predict any signal. In any number of dimensions

woah the new subnautica graphics are looking good

When I was in junior high, I wanted to be a cetacean sociologist...partially inspired by Star Trek IV, and partially by a science research paper I did then. I *loved* listening to whale song and had several tapes and cds, some with classical/new age music with the whale song. Thanks for the happy memories :)

I was born in 1974, and I remember the Save The Wales campaign. It was everywhere. We even learned about it in school and studied wales. They are magnificent creatures.

Now google even harvest whales for their data

1:57 --- Growing up in the 70s, my parents had that exact same vinyl record of Songs of the Humpback Whale. Fond memories of listening to it. I wonder whatever became of that album.

17:50 Wait, what, 150 MY?! I thought whales appeared quickly after the -65MY extinction event. There's an episode on PBS Eons about it. Someone knows more?

CETI is hands down the most mindblowing scientific project going on at the moment. So mindblowing that we may not be ready for what we hear back.

Wait, you made a whole episode about whale communication and did not invite the biggest expert in this field, Dory?!! 😱

This has to be my favourite video of yours. The quality and the content of this video truly was amazing. Keep on the great work.

Hey! I just want to say thank you so much for your content! You are awesome (:

16:32 Whales aren't the easiest to observe, but we already have other highly social animal species in observation. It wouldn't be too hard to fully cover for example a chimpanzee habitat with sensors and monitor a baby from the moment it's born until it's mature enough to communicate which usually takes much less than 5 years and that's for a very closely related species. Other species with a shorter lifespan would even be faster to comprehend such as our beloved pets: cats and dogs also interact with each other and mature in less than a year. So while whales are the biggest challenge, other species are a lot more accessible.

It's a similar thing with birds. They communicate with what we call songs, Yet we haven't been able to really talk to them in their language. And we've been able to study them closely for a long time.

Umwelt!! Love this! I read about this concept years ago when I was going to university and exploring language, semiotics, and intelligence. So cool to see some current research and how it applies to Ai. Great video!

Being German and hearing about "Umwelt" as being a concept introduced to biology in the early 20th century, in turn spawning the field of ecology, is wild. In our everyday language it literally just translates to "surrounding world" - and just means environment and it feels completely natural to use. Hearing English speaking people of scientific background refer to Umwelt as "perceived environment of an animal" feels a little odd, like someone using a word way too specifically, even though they're not wrong. I would've expected that word to be way older, too (it was borrrowed from Danish and used since the 19th century, but only in a geographical sense). Thanks for providing this little trip into my own language's heritage.

I guess whale have to see.

This is basically a 23mins long ad for AI.

9:46 lol I appreciate the editor or whoever did the MRI acronym here. Cheers.

13:36 You refenced a pretty important article here: Attention Is All You Need. This is really cool.

Star Trek made a movie about whales and how important they are to this planet.

The whales probably would have a better conversation then most people I run into

The umwelt thing about a human way of greeting and asking another animal about how it’s doing… might work for an animal that doesn’t have an ultrasonic capability that can literally peer into the physical body and understand the physiology of what it’s encountering/examining. And by understanding how the physiological and biological processes relates to the body of the organism it’s examining in ultrasonic sensory… it may get enough information simply from that observation; that it never “needs” to ask the question. They may solely communicate about observations and needs and future plans of sorts. Their culture and language may be based around the fact that they can’t hide anything in a physical sense from each other… only deeply unique, private thoughts that are rarely sung out loud unless specifically pertinent. It’s fun to speculate.

@besmart, what is hilarious is, when you get to the idea that wanting to communicate with whales is human-centred, all of the researchers use human perspective to answer the question, "What would you ask them?" What would *I* ask them? I would ask, "What is important to *you,* and btw, what is the general consensus among you about us humans?" I would want to know what they consider to be beautiful in sound, or whatever other medium they use. I would ask them what they might want to know about me, about us, about our arts and sciences. I would be open and honest. I would ask them what I could do for them, help them with, or share with them, Would they like to hear human music? Would they like to become famous as singers among humans? How can our cultures exchange in a way that would benefit our world?

Sttaaaaaayyyyyyy cccuuuuurrriiiiooooouuuuussss hahahahahahah

we need to figure this out before that whale probe from star trek iv gets here

Alot of understanding animals is to learn body language. It's astounding how much they try to communicate. My dog I swear reads my mind

They would probably come to call us the "noisy, stinky people" due to the sheer volume of both noise & chemical pollution we saturate their sea with. Currently, the human generated noise from boat engines (louder than you'd think due to cavitation), sonar & even nets grinding up the ocean bottom, has got to be severely cluttering up their pristine ocean umwelten. Because of the extemely powerful low frequency signals it uses, deep sea sonar alone has been linked to hunsreds of whale deaths (Sperm & Minke whales), with it thought that the powerful sounds caused caused their (relatively) delicate ear bones to disintegrate (making entire pods of whales repeatedly beach themselves). It's a damn shame that we don't have more whale song from earlier in their history - before we decimated many whale species (+), killing the singers of old songs before they could pass them on, or the young ones before they could learn them. I would imagine their "lexicon" would have been profoundly richer, with songs going back centuries but also with the addition of new components from each new generation. (+) Not that some groups (like the Japanese) ever stopped the mass killing of whales. Their harvesting of whales for meat - & especially their goddamn horrific Taiji dolphin slaughter - continue to this day. The volume of public outcry, though, has reduced to a whisper.

We should talk to them. We could communicate how we can avoid bothering each other and instead of beaching themselves to keep from predation when they are sick, we could meet them, provide help and protection. We could ask them if they want to remain in a zoo or be free. Unless you are so narcissistic to assume to know what is best for them, it makes sense to want to ask what they think is best for them.

I think I agree with folks in this video who are more concerned about listening to the whales than talking to them. It's not about what I say to the whale, but what the whale says to me that matters.

So enlightening. Thank you!

Roger and Katy Payne! Biggest record pressing of all time?! Umwelt. Ai Whale tales, brilliant. 150 million years of Whales communicating with each other. The change in body language of a wild bird, when you mimic their sounds, is priceless! I've had Nuthatches come up to me to see what was making the noise, the dog I was walking with became very angry! Bullfinches replying and popping out of hiding to see me. :)

Are you ever gonna get older?

Minute 5:30 and I'm sobbing. Why are these videos so good? ❤

Fascinating video, thank you! The idea of our human lenses getting in the way is so interesting! It must be quite s challenge to think outside of our human-ness: how can one identify what’s specifically human and what is more universal/objective? Some things are indeed quite obvious, as stated (I’m sorry, how are you), but I imagine there must be a whole array of things that maybe are more subtle and that impact the way scientists approach various questions.

(I haven't finished the video yet but I just wanted to say this) When you said that it was one thing for ChatGPT to help you write a title for a video but completely different for it to interpret whales, of course ChatGPT wouldn't be able to do it. But AI in general can adapt to nearly anything. Since it adapted to human language, it's reasonable to assume it could adapt to whale language which is probably not much more complex (if at all) than human language.

If A.I. is capable of decoding whale sounds that’d be an amazing breakthrough and could potentially lead to us understanding Migo’s and other mumble rap artists lyric’s one day. Absolutely terrifying!

I unironically asked an AI this question and it's response - "The idea of communicating with whales is fascinating, and AI could potentially play a role in facilitating such interspecies communication, though there are significant challenges involved. Some ways AI might assist in talking to whales include: - Analyzing whale vocalizations and body language using machine learning models to try to decipher patterns and potential meanings. AI could help identify distinct "words" or signals whales use. - Translating between the acoustics and timing patterns of whale communication and human language formats that are easier for us to comprehend. - Simulating and generating potential whale vocalizations that could be played back to whales to attempt primitive communication once patterns are recognized. - Controlling underwater robots or interfaces that could both receive and broadcast communication attempts with whales more naturally in their environments. However, the barriers are still immense. Whale intelligence, language capacity, and methods of communication are very different from humans. We may be fundamentally unable to communicate rich conceptual information between the species. Additionally, the risk of disturbing whale behavior or causing unintended harm through incorrect assumptions about communication acts as an ethical constraint on such experimentation currently. So while AI analysis and simulation tools could provide avenues for exploration, deciphering and communicating with an alien intelligence like whales may remain extremely challenging even with advanced AI capabilities involved. It's a fascinating goal that may require an extended "listening" period before two-way interaction can be realistically achieved, if ever."

I think the real question is if it would be a good idea. Someone elsewhere raised a very good point about just how these animals (or really any animal for that matter) might react if suddenly these weird 4-limbed land-dwellers began speaking to them in their language. They might freak out, and I wouldn't blame them, because I'd probably do the same if my pet rabbit started talking to me in English, adorable as he is.

This is how AI and the whales team up to conquer us!

I hope we don’t take the AI generated language results too seriously. Based on how well ChatGPT is working currently, we’re likely to learn (incorrectly) that whales are plotting to multiply enough to displace ocean water and raise sea levels to drown the humans.

Firstly knowledge for knowledge sake is good and secondly if we figure out what whales are saying to each other it will give us insight into what we might say to them but learning what they’re saying to each other is enough for me to be fascinated

We kinda know about some animal language already, when a dog is howling or crying we have an idea of why he is doing it. When a cat hisses too. Problem is, we barely know what a whale is doing when it makes an specific noise.

Umwelt = environment ?

Whales first comment to humans - " Stop destroying my planet!"

Amazing stuff, and I can't wait to see where it leads.. Although, the biggest issue I can imagine with talking to animals like whales.. is that if we abuse that ability, if we betray them or trick them, they'll quickly learn to ignore us, and future communication will become less likely.

When we are talking about 'listening', from our umwelt(?), it does not mean somebody who is only passively listening. A good listener, for most people on earth, is someone who listen and speak back sometimes, to show they relate to your words, to say they feel something about what you're saying, whatever. I think we should be good listeners, if we can.

AI can help us talk to whales, but it won't help us understand their laughing at what we actually say.

I love the thought of us investing years of AI development into understanding their language only to learn whales exclusively make "Your mom's so fat" jokes.

Human: "Greetings, Mr. Sperm Whale!" Cachalot: "WTF did you just call me? 😡"

I was most interested in the first part of the video , about the history of whale hunting , and how a song changed the perception of humans about it

"A.I." can barely talk to humans.

I feel we should try to learn how intelligent these creatures are if we are able to communicate. We could help them to get smarter.

Wonderful video about a captivating subject! ❤

17:30 Ludwig Wittgenstein talked about this in terms of if we could converse with a lion. He reckoned even if we _could_ we would fail to understand each other. We probably see the world in such different ways.

“Farewell to Tarwathie” by Judy Collins has beautiful whale song. I can’t guess how often I played on my parent’s turntable. ❤️🐳

I could sway some hearts and minds. Imagine a legit recording of a whale saying something that equates to "humans make water dirty", lol.

Those whale song spectrograms on a poster would be great merch! I'd buy it.

Greatly appreciate for deliver such a dedicated and detailed content to the society.

I really like these experts

this is so exciting. i hope one day we can use this technology for conservation

I think that it'd be possible to construct a language model that could accurately capture the complexities of whatever language(s) whales are using to speak with each other. But just because it could 'understand' the patterns involved and produce appropriate responses to whales' sounds, doesn't necessarily mean that it can act as a Rosetta stone between our languages and those of whales. As you pointed out, there is very little that the world of whales has in common with our own. I think our best bet would be to go for what little experiences we do share as social, intelligent, long-lived mammals and build an understanding from that; Concepts like family, mother, child, food, breath, pain, temperature, sight, taste, smell, touch.

7:04 OMGGGGG you never see UCSC being represented! Thats where I went for school!

"Learn to be better listeners" that stands true both toward animals and especially our fellow human beings. We should learn to listen to all earthlings. We stand to comprehend a lot more.

I think the real key to getting this to work is testing different approaches using human speech. Train an AI on human speech without telling it what the words mean, only providing certain context clues. If we can get that to work, then the same approach should work with other species.

"Have there ever been wars between whales?" Is what I would ask

I imagine when they hear us wondering about the fermi patadox, it would go something like this: "there's these guys in a big cylyndrical space ship who like us and they check in every ten thousand years or so, you can say hi to them in a couple hundred years". I imagine while needing more weight, a spaceship for aquatic species would be more resilient to radiation and be better at attacking things in space by using that extra mass to ram through large structures. If something whale like became a spacefairing civilization then they would probably be upset that we drove whales extinct. Sound can travel insane distances underwater, so you dont need radios in that case, and the fermi paradox could be influenced by the proportion of intelligent species who are whale like.

best episode since ..... thank you !

"I Am Leaper" by Annabel Johnson was what I immediately thought of.

I think we should. Absolutely. I just want to know who they are and what their world is like. I have a difficult time believing that understanding them would incentivize us to treat them with less compassion.

Having this technology doesn't mean we have to have conversations. I think it'd be immensely valuable to simply listen to them.

A joint society of whales and people would be the coolest thing ever. Every experience we’ve ever had access to came from humans. Getting a completely different perspective from a being with completely different senses sounds mindblowing. Hopefully they’ll forgive us for what our ancestors have done though.

From what I know, sperm whales make the loudest sounds. They are by far the loudest, with sounds reaching upto 238 db. Blue whales can make only sounds of about 180 db.

Just a point of correction, Michelle Fournet was incorrect when she said that whales have been singing for 150 million years. They didn't even evolve to live underwater from their ungulate ancestors until 42-47MYA, and didn't evolve echolocation until ~40MYA. Still impressive, but not 150-million-years-impressive

To answer your question if we should. Yes, unequivocally yes. How would we ever know if we don't learn to ask. We share the planet, that's a good enough reason to learn to coexist better. Communication would drastically help that along.

I have no problem with people communicating with them but there is a deeper issue, context. People talk about people things, whales likely talk about whale things. Getting whales to understand human things without experiencing our environment might be exceptionally difficult. What we communicate with them about might just be limited to things that impact them, like ocean conditions and weather, earthquakes, sea life migrations, etc. Some of our concepts might be so alien to them that they may never be able to understand.

Excellent. Thanks! I think it would be extremely valuable and not disruptive to just listen to and learn from whatever communication is in the humpback song. . . . .There was an unfortunate error in the video. Whales have been around for 50, not 150, million years, and their rapid evolution from land to sea is fascinating and very mysterious how they weren’t eliminated by large well-established predators.

It’s more than likely that only humans have the ability to consciously communicate complex information. Whale song may just be like birdsong, beautiful to listen to, but not language. There’s been much talk about Simian communication and their ability to learn sign language, but I seriously doubt that there is any real communication there. It should be a simple thing to put a very hungry chimp in a cage on their own, with an empty adjacent cage containing cupboards with food in them. Then, another known, and similarly peckish chimp should be introduced to the second cage containing the food, but crucially it will not know about the secret cache of food. The chimps should then be left alone to their own devices so that they can communicate with each other. Should they posses even a rudimentary form of language, chimp 1 should be able to convey to chimp 2 that there is hidden food. Although this experiment has been carried out, no chimp has ever demonstrated an ability to convey the information. They do get very anxious to get the food, but they cannot communicate in any coherent way that there is a hidden treasure trove. Surely if whales been honing their communication skills for over 150 million years, shouldn’t they have been able to effectively communicate some sort of warning/defence to their fellow cetaceans about the whaling that so decimated their species? If they are truly intelligent, they should have developed some sort of understanding of basic mathematics and been able to transmit something that we would understand as coming from an intelligent mind? Yes they exist in a different medium to humans, but surely if they are to be viewed as intelligent, they should recognise intelligence in humans and have made efforts to ‘reach’ us before now? IMO, IF they were truly sapient, then, seeing as they perceive the world through sonar, I believe they’d communicate ideas directly between minds.. Humans verbally communicate through the air, so we use words that are basically icons that another human interprets into a mental picture. For a being living under water that uses sonar, they’d probably be able to transmit those images (that are built up from sonar pulses) directly to the mind of another whale. There would probably be some error correcting clicks sent along with the ‘packets’ of information to provide redundancy. That would be the basis of communication, and then they’d probably build on that with finely tuned pulses that could directly activate regions of another whales brain, further modifying the image/s with supplementary information relating to spatial orientation, position in time, etc, etc. This would be a much more workable solution that creating icons. Should whale communication prove to be like this, then AI will never be able to decode it. If they were truly intelligent, they would’ve developed a civilisation by now. Even without opposable thumbs, or any manipulatory appendages, and hte use of fire, intelligence would have led them to civilisation - they’d probably use their sonar to co-opt the will of octopuses and use their manipulatory appendages as a proxy for their own designs.

Whale album is just amazing! ❤