Aug 29, 2023 6:00 AMHow to Use AI to Talk to Whales—and Save Life on EarthWith ecosystems in crisis, engineers and scientists are teaming up to decipher what animals are saying. Their hope: By truly listening to nature, humans will decide to protect it.Colorful blue and yellow graphic with two abstract whalesILLUSTRATION: AGNES JONASBefore Michelle Fournet moved to Alaska on a whim in her early twenties, she’d never seen a whale. She took a job on a whale watching boat and, each day she was out on the water, gazed at the grand shapes moving under the surface. For her entire life, she realized, the natural world had been out there, and she’d been missing it. “I didn’t even know I was bereft,” she recalls. Later, as a graduate student in marine biology, Fournet wondered what else she was missing. The humpbacks she was getting to know revealed themselves in partial glimpses. What if she could hear what they were saying? She dropped a hydrophone in the water—but the only sound that came through was the mechanical churn of boats. The whales had fallen silent amid the racket. Just as
Source: How to Use AI to Talk to Whales—and Save Life on Earth | WIRED