Transcript of How AI is helping to decipher animal communication

There's a lot of discussion about the use of artificial intelligence in virtually every industry right now, but especially in the world of science. My next guest is using AI to decode whale language and believes his research could one day take humanity into extraterrestrial territory. His work is part of National Geographic's November issue on Artificial Intelligence. I'm joined now by National Geographic Explorer, David Gruber. David, it's great to have you on.

Hey, it's a pleasure to be here, Whit. Thanks for inviting me.

Of course. Talk to me first about how AI can lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of nature.

Well, I mean, most of the AI that we've developed is geared towards ourself. We're analyzing all these books, the entire Internet. But when you look at another species, like a nonhuman, there actually hadn't been that much information. That's where the organization that I run, Project SETI, a nonprofit, we have been starting We've been collecting since 2020, working off the island of Dominica, where there are resident sperm whales. We've been collecting the largest nonhuman database and put together a team of over 50 scientists across eight disciplines all to listen to and translate what sperm whales are saying.

It really is fascinating. We're looking at some of the video here. Why sperm whales? And what have you found so far?

Why sperm whales? Sperm whales are just honored to work with these creatures. They've got the biggest brain of any animal, as we know of on Earth or in the universe, 18 pounds. They speak in a click-like communication called codas, which actually turn out to be very useful for AI to decode. It's almost like a one and a zero. Their language goes back tens of millions of years. What we found so far is we've been just working and building up the fundamental building blocks. In In May of this year, we released the first spermwhale finetic alphabet. In a few more months, we'll be releasing on the spermwhales having vowels. We're really just putting together the pieces. You can't understand a nonhuman communication system without knowing the fundamentals. That's where we're at.

Incredible. The spermwhale alphabet. I'll definitely have to check that out. Let's fast forward to the future a little bit here because we understand that you believe this research might, one day, perhaps, help humans communicate with extraterrestrials. Explain how that could work. This is like science fiction, nerd brain. I'm all in. Tell me about it.

Well, I'm glad you're all in. I mean, we named ourselves Project CETI in homage to the SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrile Intelligence. We see ourselves as interterrestrial. We're looking right here on this planet, we have whales swimming in the ocean, still hundreds of thousands of sperm whales that are communicating in this click-like communication that we don't understand. If we can't translate animals that are on our planet, how are we going to go out several light years and translate his late in life if and when we do find it. We really see this as the first step, and it's a way to look inward, but to gain almost the training wheels. If we can't do this right here in the ocean, it'll be really tough to do a couple of light years out. We're excited to play this fundamental role in even thinking of, theoretically, how would we translate an alien non-human communication system?

Wow, I love it. I don't know if you read the science fiction series, The Three Body Problem, but I feel like there should have been a section on AI communication with the aliens in there. David Gruber, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it and looking forward to following through on your research. Again, for more on this story, you can visit natgeo. Com. National Geographic is a joint venture between the National Geographic Society and Disney.