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DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication

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Re: DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication

#111

Post by iury-sza »

doublerabbit wrote: post #55
Nifty3929 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm as or more cynical than the next guy - but it seems to me that being able to communicate with animals has high utility for humans. Partly from an emotional or companionship perspective as we've been doing with dogs for a long time, but maybe even on purely utilitarian grounds. If we want to know something about what's going on in the ocean, or high on a mountain or in the sky or whatever - what if we can just ask…

I am all for the Disney utopian fantasy of us living with animals. However if universal communication was to be made. Don't you think that animals are going to be pretty pissed to discover what we have done with their kingdom? "Hi Mr Dolphin, how's the sea today?" "Wet and a plastic bottle cap got lodged in my blowhole last night..."

There's an Apple TV+ series called Extrapolations with a plot of a dystopian future heavily affected by climate change. One of the plotlines involve humans successfully developing the technology to communicate with humpback whales.

So, the story involves an animal DNA archivist interacting with what's presented as the last living humpback whale, focusing on its isolation etc. It turns out the research lab's goal is to trick the whale by faking mating signals, aiming to get it to reveal information about whale history and culture. It's essentially data mining the animal.

Re: DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication

#113

Post by JSteph22 »

9dev wrote: post #76
k7sune wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just reading how fishing industry’s longlines have caught many dolphins and other bycatches. It would be great to be able to give them warnings, or even better, to ask them to keep other big animals away from the longlines.

Or, like, we could stop ravaging the oceans by industrial fishing, stop pretending magical technology will save the day, and try to limit our resource consumption to sustainable levels? Humanity’s relationship with animals is so schizophrenic. On the one hand, let’s try to learn how to talk to cute dolphins and chat with them what it’s like to swim! , and on the other, well yeah that steak on my table may have once l…

>we could stop ravaging the oceans by industrial fishing

To do this likely would require large-scale war.

Re: DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication

#114

Post by nfw2 »

vlovich123 wrote: post #96
nfw2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement is virtue signaling according to its own definition unless you've taken action to prevent people complaining about Google.

Did I say anything about people complaining about Google? I think you misread or misinterpreted what I wrote.

You haven’t taken actions against me misinterpreting things. Why do you keep virtue signaling?

Re: DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication

#115

Post by renewiltord »

gazebo64 wrote: post #67
k7sune wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just reading how fishing industry’s longlines have caught many dolphins and other bycatches. It would be great to be able to give them warnings, or even better, to ask them to keep other big animals away from the longlines.

I know this comment is totally innocent but it does kind of bum me out to be at a point in time where instead of addressing our impact on the environment directly, we're trying to make computers that can talk to dolphins so we can tell them to stay out of the way lol

One of the things I think is amazing is that people will say “here’s a way to make the world better” and others will react with “it’s so sad that you propose making the world better instead of making it perfect”. I think it’s great.

Re: DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication

#117

Post by meindnoch »

zoogeny wrote: post #53

Not directly related, but one of those stories that is so bizarre you almost can't believe it isn't made up. There was a NASA funded attempt to communicate with Dolphins. This eccentric scientist created a house that was half water (a series of connected pools) and half dry spaces. A woman named Margaret Howe Lovatt lived full-time with the Dolphins attempting to learn a shared language between them. Things went comp…

>A woman named Margaret Howe Lovatt lived full-time with the Dolphins attempting to learn a shared language between them.

She also had sex with a male dolphin called Peter.

>He would take LSD and place himself in the tank and believed he was psychically communicating with the Dolphins.

He eventually came to believe he was communicating with a cosmic entity called ECCO (Earth Coincidence Control Office). The story of the Sega game "Ecco the Dolphin" [1] is a tongue-in-cheek reference to this. I recommend watching the Atrocity Guide episode on John C. Lily and his dolphin "science" [2]. It's on par with The Men Who Stare at Goats (the non-fiction book [3], not the movie).

He has a website that looks like it's been untouched since his death, 2001: http://www.johnclilly.com/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecco_the_Dolphin

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UziFw-jQSks

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats

Re: DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication

#118

Post by addicted »

k7sune wrote: post #60
Nifty3929 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm as or more cynical than the next guy - but it seems to me that being able to communicate with animals has high utility for humans. Partly from an emotional or companionship perspective as we've been doing with dogs for a long time, but maybe even on purely utilitarian grounds. If we want to know something about what's going on in the ocean, or high on a mountain or in the sky or whatever - what if we can just ask…

I was just reading how fishing industry’s longlines have caught many dolphins and other bycatches. It would be great to be able to give them warnings, or even better, to ask them to keep other big animals away from the longlines.

Or, you know, don’t fish at all so we don’t kill possibly trillions of sentient fish every year for no necessary reason whatsoever?

Side bonus, we also don’t kill the highly sentient and highly intelligent creatures you’re concerned about.

Re: DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication

#119

Post by FranzFerdiNaN »

efitz wrote: post #86
9dev wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, like, we could stop ravaging the oceans by industrial fishing, stop pretending magical technology will save the day, and try to limit our resource consumption to sustainable levels? Humanity’s relationship with animals is so schizophrenic. On the one hand, let’s try to learn how to talk to cute dolphins and chat with them what it’s like to swim! , and on the other, well yeah that steak on my table may have once l…

Humans are omnivores. I am unapologetic about obeying biological imperatives to eat other animals. At the same time, I want to be as humane as practical; I don’t want to cause needless suffering to any creature. If I kill a bug, I don’t want it to suffer. Same with food animals. The more like me an animal is, the less I want to eat it. There are a lot of humans. Any action to forcefully reduce the number of humans or…

> Humans are omnivores. I am unapologetic about obeying biological imperatives to eat other animals.

This is akin to saying ''humans are violent, so i am unapologetic about obeying biological imperatives to commit violence''.

So just be honest: you WANT to eat meat because you like it, consequences be damned.

And of course if you truly want to feed as many humans as possible the only solution is vegetarianism or even veganism. Meat is just way too wasteful to be a decent solution.

Re: DolphinGemma: How Google AI is helping decode dolphin communication

#120

Post by nsonha »

ZeroCool2u wrote: post #12

Wow, there's a lot of cynicism in this thread, even for HN. Regardless of whether or not it works perfectly, surely we can all relate to the childhood desire to 'speak' to animals at one point or another? You can call it a waste of resources or someones desperate attempt at keeping their job if you want, but these are marine biologists. I imagine cross species communication would be a major achievement and seems like…

Childhood dream aside, this to me seems like a much more legit use of AI than, say, generative art, so lame and pointless.
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