dolphins

google-created-a-new-ai-model-for-talking-to-dolphins

Google created a new AI model for talking to dolphins

AI, Artificial Intelligence, dolphins, Google, Science / /

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.

One of the WDP’s main goals is to analyze the way dolphins vocalize and how that can affect their social interactions. With decades of underwater recordings, researchers have managed to connect some basic activities to specific sounds. For example, Atlantic spotted dolphins have signature whistles that appear to be used like names, allowing two specific individuals to find each other. They also consistently produce “squawk” sound patterns during fights.

WDP researchers believe that understanding the structure and patterns of dolphin vocalizations is necessary to determine if their communication rises to the level of a language. “We do not know if animals have words,” says WDP’s Denise Herzing.

An overview of DolphinGemma

The ultimate goal is to speak dolphin, if indeed there is such a language. The pursuit of this goal has led WDP to create a massive, meticulously labeled data set, which Google says is perfect for analysis with generative AI.

Meet DolphinGemma

The large language models (LLMs) that have become unavoidable in consumer tech are essentially predicting patterns. You provide them with an input, and the models predict the next token over and over until they have an output. When a model has been trained effectively, that output can sound like it was created by a person. Google and WDP hope it’s possible to do something similar with DolphinGemma for marine mammals.

DolphinGemma is based on Google’s Gemma open AI models, which are themselves built on the same foundation as the company’s commercial Gemini models. The dolphin communication model uses a Google-developed audio technology called SoundStream to tokenize dolphin vocalizations, allowing the sounds to be fed into the model as they’re recorded.

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Let us spray: River dolphins launch pee streams into air

animal behavior, animal communication, animals, Biology, dolphins, Science / /

According to Amazonian folklore, the area’s male river dolphins are shapeshifters (encantade), transforming at night into handsome young men who seduce and impregnate human women. The legend’s origins may lie in the fact that dolphins have rather human-like genitalia. A group of Canadian biologists didn’t spot any suspicious shapeshifting behavior over the four years they spent monitoring a dolphin population in central Brazil, but they did document 36 cases of another human-like behavior: what appears to be some sort of cetacean pissing contest.

Specifically, the male dolphins rolled over onto their backs, displayed their male members, and launched a stream of urine as high as 3 feet into the air. This usually occurred when other males were around, who seemed fascinated in turn by the arching streams of pee, even chasing after them with their snouts. It’s possibly a form of chemical sensory communication and not merely a need to relieve themselves, according to the biologists, who described their findings in a paper published in the journal Behavioral Processes. As co-author Claryana Araújo-Wang of CetAsia Research Group in Ontario, Canada, told New Scientist, “We were really shocked, as it was something we had never seen before.”

Spraying urine is a common behavior in many animal species, used to mark territory, defend against predators, communicate with other members of one’s species, or as a means of mate selection since it has been suggested that the chemicals in the urine carry useful information about physical health or social dominance.

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