‍

Blake, Wm. The Sea of Time and Space. 1821.

‍

Scientists are setting their sights on a new goal: communicating with whales using AI.

This aim dates back to 2020, when biologist David Gruber raised $33 million for a hi-tech effort to learn the language of whales. To accomplish this, researchers would record billions of the animals’ clicking sounds and then decipher the sounds’ meaning using neural networks.

This process will require years of meticulous observation as well as fundamental breakthroughs in AI. But if scientists are successful, it would be a first-contact scenario involving two species that have lived side by side for ages.

Richard Moore, a philosopher of language at the University of Warwick, says this dialogue could be rich. He told The Atlantic that we have significant evidence for syntax among whales’ calls, and that he wouldn’t be surprised if they are capable of communication that is “vastly more complex” than we’re anticipating, or even comparable to human language.