Latest news with #PratyushaSharma
Forbes
12-06-2025
- Science
- Forbes
CETI Looks Into The Complexities Of Whale Sounds With AI
What can we learn from the whales? It's something that researchers at the CETI project (not to be confused with the SETI Institute) are working on in order to help drive awareness around language models that exist right here in our own world. In a recent TED talk, CETI's Pratyusha Sharma talks about the communication of sperm whales, and how humans can use that to learn more about other species and ourselves. Sharma is a graduate student at CSAIL and works with advisors like our own Daniela Rus to advance this kind of discovery. As a starter, she gave the example of aliens speaking to humans verbally, or through a script – and again, distinguish CETI from what they're doing in space research! 'Communication is a key characteristic of intelligence,' Sharma explained. 'Being able to create an infinite set of messages by sequencing together finite sets of sounds is what has distinguished human beings from other species.' However, she said, CETI research indicates that we may not be alone on the earth in developing these kinds of systems. In figuring this out, she suggested, we can get insights on other species, and understand our own language better as well. Millions of life forms on earth, she said, share some form of language. 'They have their own physical and mental constraints, and are involved in their own unique ecosystems and societies,' she said. 'However, we know very little about – their communications.' So how do you decipher them? In further explaining what goes on at CETI, she listed different stakeholders with credentials in areas like linguistics, biology, cryptography and AI. (Here's some more background on the project). Most of the research, she said, is taking place in the Dominican Republic, or in the Caribbean. Explaining how the large brains of sperm whales have evolved over 16 million years, she described activity that shows advanced thinking: 'The members of the family coordinate their dives, engage in extended periods of socialization, and even take turns babysitting each other's young ones,' she said. 'While coordinating in complete darkness, they exchange long sequences of sounds with one another.' The question, she noted, is this: what are they saying? Researchers at CETI have identified 21 types of 'codas' or call systems with a certain complexity. 'One of the key differentiators between human language and all animal communications is that beautiful property called duality of patterning,' Sharma said. 'It's how a base set of individually meaningless elements sequence together to give rise to words, that in turn are sequenced together to give rise to an infinite space with complex meaning.' She outlined some of the principles through which CETI is building this species knowledge. 'Getting to the point of understanding the communications of sperm whales will require us to understand what features of their (vocalizations) they control,' she said. Presenting a set of 'coda visualizations,' Sharma noted that these simple communications correspond to complex behavior. '(This) presented a fundamental mystery to researchers in the field,' she said. She showed how the CETI work magnifies the structure of a coda: 'Even though the clicks might not have sounded like music initially, when we plot them like this, they start to look like music,' she said, presenting a combinatorial coda system. 'They have different tempos and even different rhythm.' This, she added, reveals a lot about the minds of these creatures. 'The resulting set of individual sounds (in the coda) can represent 10 times more meanings than what was previously believed, showing that sperm whales can be much more expressive than what was previously thought,' she said. 'These systems are rare in nature, but not uniquely human. … these results open up the possibility that sperm whales' communication might provide our first example of this phenomenon in another species. … this will allow us to use more powerful machine learning techniques to analyze the data, and perhaps get us closer to an understanding the meanings of their sounds – and maybe (we can) even communicate back.' The research, she added, continues: 'Hopefully the algorithms and approaches we developed in the course of this project empower us to better understand the other species that we share this planet with,' she said. This type of research has a lot of potential!! Let's see what it turns up as we continue through the age of AI.
Scottish Sun
22-05-2025
- Scottish Sun
Shocking moment giant 50ft sperm whale is found on Brit holiday beach – before LORRY needed to tow 35-tonne beast away
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) THIS is the shocking moment a gargantuan 50-foot, 35-tonne sperm whale is found on a Brit holiday beach before needing to get towed away by a lorry due to its size. The enormous marine mammal had apparently suffered a fatal strike to the head by a passing vessel in tourist hotspot Tenerife, Spain. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 5 The enormous marine mammal had apparently suffered a fatal strike to the head by a passing vessel Credit: Jam Press 5 A huge sperm whale washed up on a beach at a holiday hotspot popular with Brits Credit: Jam Press 5 The enormous corpse was lifted off the beach by a lorry Credit: Jam Press A Brit expat spotted the gargantuan whale washed up on the beach outside his apartment yesterday morning. The 51-year-old said he walked to the front window 'with his coffee in hand and was stumped to see a whale on the small beach below my apartment'. He added: 'It's not every day you find a whale washed up on your doorstep.' Shocking footage shows the massive creature - which are often between 15 to 18 metres long - laying on the beach. read more news WHITE WHALE Watch rare vid of albino killer whale as real-life Moby Dick breaches waves Confused locals are seen approaching the mammal before touching its tail. The sperm whale was already dead by the time its massive carcass was swept ashore. Authorities scrambled quickly to the scene to take samples of the marine mammal. The enormous corpse was lifted off the beach by a lorry due to its size, before being taken away for incineration. It was the fourth whale to wash ashore in the Canary Islands this month alone. A whale was swept ashore in the tourist town of Playa de las Américas last Friday. Abandoned theme park left 'frozen in time' where stranded Orca whales and bottlenose dolphins have been left to rot Two others appeared dead on the coast of Gran Canaria earlier this month. Over 30 marine mammal species live in Canarian waters, including dolphins, pilot whales, and sperm whales. The Canary Islands record an average of 50 to 60 marine creature strandings each year, caused by disease, pollution, collisions, or acoustic disorientation. Scientists have possibly identified the first species other than humans to use unique sounds as building blocks for complex communication. Considered to be highly social animals, whales are known to communicate with each other by producing different combinations of clicks. Researchers recently compared the phenomena — observed in sperm whales in the Caribbean — to how people use a set number of sounds (represented by letters) to compose words into an endless combination of sentences. "Sperm whale vocalizations are more expressive and structured than previously believed," lead researcher Pratyusha Sharma of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote in the paper. "Our findings open up the possibility that sperm whale communication might provide our first example of that phenomenon in another species," they said. The discovery emerged thanks to an analysis of sperm whale vocalizations from about 60 animals that were recorded between 2005 and 2018. Researchers examined the whales' sounds to look for similarities and patterns and ultimately found several repeated, 2-second-long 'codas' — the basic units of speech. They found thousands of instances of unique sets of codas, or what could be considered words in human communication. Scientists noted that the sets of sounds used by the sperm whales in the study varied by context. 5 The enormous corpse was lifted off the beach by a lorry before being taken away for incineration Credit: Jam Press
The Irish Sun
22-05-2025
- The Irish Sun
Shocking moment giant 50ft sperm whale is found on Brit holiday beach – before LORRY needed to tow 35-tonne beast away
THIS is the shocking moment a gargantuan 50-foot, 35-tonne sperm whale is found on a Brit holiday beach before needing to get towed away by a lorry due to its size. The enormous marine mammal had apparently suffered a fatal strike to the head by a passing vessel in tourist hotspot Tenerife, Spain. 5 The enormous marine mammal had apparently suffered a fatal strike to the head by a passing vessel Credit: Jam Press 5 A huge sperm whale washed up on a beach at a holiday hotspot popular with Brits Credit: Jam Press 5 The enormous corpse was lifted off the beach by a lorry Credit: Jam Press A Brit expat spotted the gargantuan whale washed up on the beach outside his apartment yesterday morning. The 51-year-old said he walked to the front window 'with his coffee in hand and was stumped to see a whale on the small beach below my apartment'. He added: 'It's not every day you find a whale washed up on your doorstep.' Shocking footage shows the massive creature - which are often between 15 to 18 metres long - laying on the beach. read more news Confused locals are seen approaching the mammal before touching its tail. The sperm whale was already dead by the time its massive carcass was swept ashore. Authorities scrambled quickly to the scene to take samples of the marine mammal. The enormous corpse was lifted off the beach by a lorry due to its size, before being taken away for incineration. Most read in The Sun It was the fourth whale to wash ashore in the Canary Islands this month alone. A whale was swept ashore in the tourist town of Playa de las Américas last Friday. Abandoned theme park left 'frozen in time' where stranded Orca whales and bottlenose dolphins have been left to rot Two others appeared dead on the coast of Gran Canaria earlier this month. Over 30 marine mammal species live in Canarian waters, including dolphins, pilot whales, and sperm whales. The Canary Islands record an average of 50 to 60 marine creature strandings each year, caused by disease, pollution, collisions, or acoustic disorientation. Scientists have possibly identified the first species other than humans to use unique sounds as building blocks for complex communication. Considered to be highly social animals , whales are known to communicate with each other by producing different combinations of clicks. Researchers recently compared the phenomena — observed in sperm whales in the Caribbean — to how people use a set number of sounds (represented by letters) to compose words into an endless combination of sentences. "Sperm whale vocalizations are more expressive and structured than previously believed," lead researcher Pratyusha Sharma of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote in the paper. "Our findings open up the possibility that sperm whale communication might provide our first example of that phenomenon in another species," they said. The discovery emerged thanks to an analysis of sperm whale vocalizations from about 60 animals that were recorded between 2005 and 2018. Researchers examined the whales' sounds to look for similarities and patterns and ultimately found several repeated, 2-second-long 'codas' — the basic units of speech. They found thousands of instances of unique sets of codas, or what could be considered words in human communication. Scientists noted that the sets of sounds used by the sperm whales in the study varied by context. 5 The enormous corpse was lifted off the beach by a lorry before being taken away for incineration Credit: Jam Press 5 The huge sperm whale was loaded onto the back of a truck Credit: Jam Press
