p3x.deGoogle created a new AI model for talking to dolphins
arstechnica.com/science/2025/04/google-created-…
Dolphins are generally regarded as some of the smartest creatures on the planet. Research has shown they can cooperate, teach each other new skills, and even recognize themselves in a mirror. For decades, scientists have attempted to make sense of the complex collection of whistles and clicks dolphins use to communicate. Researchers might make a little headway on that front soon with the help of Google's open AI model and some Pixel phones.
Google has been finding ways to work generative AI into everything else it does, so why not its collaboration with the Wild Dolphin Project (WDP)? This group has been studying dolphins since 1985 using a non-invasive approach to track a specific community of Atlantic spotted dolphins. The WDP creates video and audio recordings of dolphins, along with correlating notes on their behaviors.
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It's just going to hallucinate bullshit. Because we have so much training data of conversations between humans and dolphins don't we?
jarfilThis group has been studying dolphins since 1985 using a non-invasive approach to track a specific community of Atlantic spotted dolphins. The WDP creates video and audio recordings of dolphins, along with correlating notes on their behaviors.
Just the 40 years, for that specific group of dolphins.
So imagine the language model can produce grammatically correct and semantically meaningful dolphin language, how does it translate that to a human language?
The reason LLMs can do this for human languages is that we have an enormous corpus of Rosetta stones for every language that allow the model to correlate concepts in each language. The training data for human to dolphin is going to be just these “behavioural notes.”
So the outcome is that the bullshitting machine will bullshit the scientists that it knows what they’re saying when it’s actually just making stuff up.
It’s a big problem with LLMs that they very rarely answer, “I don’t know.”
LLMs use a tokenizer stage to convert input data into NN inputs, then a de-tokenizer at the output.
Those tokens are not limited to "human language", they can as well be positions, orientations, directions, movements, etc. "Body language", or the flight pattern of a bee, are as tokenizable as any other input data.
The concepts a dolphin language may have, no matter what they are, could then be described in a human language, and/or matched to human words for the same description.
haverholmFFS, our first verbal contact with nonhuman persons is going to cause a diplomatic crisis 🤦
Something something tarifs, something something antisemitism
Communist
They're gonna tell us about the new intergalactic super highway being built through the solar system.
Did you get a glass bowl?
I am not panicking, I have my towel.
They have a brain as complex as ours, they’re social, and they’re believed to be really smart.
If they’re actually dumb, very dumb, I swear to god I will buy a single non-certified dolphin-free tuna can out of spite.
Afaik whales have more spindle neurons than we do:
https://www.science.org/content/article/well-wired-whales
This is probably one of the best actual uses for something like generative AI. With enough data, they should be able to vectorize and translate dolphin language, assuming there is one.
So they're aiming for a real-life version of SeaQuest DSV? Considering Season 1 was set in 2018-2019, we're 7 years behind schedule so far...
When that happens and one can talk to dolphins:
- There will be a debatte about dolphins and animal rights
- There will pop up startups with Talk-to-your-dog/cats/whatever-AI
- In 10 year or so, we might discover that one can communicate to trees, flowers, plants as well through chemical transmitters or whatsever
There's already talk-to-your-dog/cat products such as FluentPet. Probably the biggest issue with cats in particular is that their "vocabulary" is quite limited (usually less than a dozen distinct "meows"), but some of the FluentPet users (examples on Youtube such as BilliSpeaks) seem to suggest basic reasoning. A full-blown language is beyond them, but they do seem capable of understanding more concepts than we give them credit for.
So, what, Google's gonna sell them a plastic trash cleanup subscription service?
And this is how we will go down.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
What a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double backward somersault through a hoop whilst whistling "The Star-Spangled Banner". Great job!
Well I for one welcome our new
AIDolphin overlordsObviously! Look at the current world leaders. We might as well try the dolphins.
Why wasn't I told that was an option sooner?