21-09-2022

WedNesdAY, sePTeMBeR 21, 2022
5
PATRIck BARkHAM
Tom Mustill was kayaking with his friend Charlotte in
Monterey Bay, California, when an animal three times the
size of the largest Tyrannosaurus Rex hurtled from the water
and crashed down on their tiny craft. As the flying
humpback whale fell upon them and their kayak was sucked
beneath the waves, Mustill assumed he would die.
Miraculously he and Charlotte found themselves gasping for
breath, clinging to their capsized kayak. How had they
survived a smash with a creature three times the weight of a
double-decker bus?
What happened next was almost as weird. Mustill and
Charlotte went viral. Passing whale-watching tourists had
videoed the pair's near-death encounter and stuck it on
YouTube. Mustill, a wildlife filmmaker, became what he calls
"a lightning conductor for whale fanatics". Interviewed by
the global media, he was soon quivering with different and
extraordinary stories of whale meetings from around the
world: a submariner told him about whales singing to his
ship; a book publisher reported being apparently scanned by
the sonar-like echolocation of a pregnant female dolphin - a
few days later, she discovered that she too was pregnant. "It
was really addictive finding out all these other stories," says
Mustill, "because each one was like another lens on the
animal and our relationship to them."
These stories alone could fill a book, but Mustill first made
a BBC documentary about humpback whales, before writing
his book, How to Speak Whale, which is a thrilling
exploration of past, present and future scientific endeavours
to communicate with animals and better understand
cetaceans in particular. What begins with questions about
his own brief encounter soon plumbs profound scientific
and philosophical depths.
As Mustill explains when I meet him beside a watery realm
- a reservoir close to his home in east London - his
wondering about how he survived became a bigger question.
Professor Joy Reidenberg, a whale scientist, told him the
footage suggested the whale veered away from Mustill's
kayak mid-breach, as if it didn't want to hit them. "It made
sense because I couldn't figure out how it hadn't smashed us
to bits," he says. "More spiritual friends said, 'Ah well, the
whale didn't want to hurt you.' I felt it was more like walking
into a cellar at night, hearing a rat squeak and not wanting to
tread on it - it's not necessarily out of compassion. The whale
might have thought, 'Urgh, what's that?'"
Did the whale mean to spare Mustill? "You can't just ask a
whale," said Reidenberg. But perhaps we will soon. "This is
the beginning of augmented biology," he says, "where our
human deficiencies - what we can't sense, where we can't go,
what we actually have the time to find patterns in - all seem
to be falling down." We're at a moment in time, he argues,
comparable to Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's mid-17thcentury
invention of the modern microscope and
microbiology. Today, big data and machine learning could
probe an impenetrable frontier - the chasm between our
consciousness and those of other animals. Can we
communicate with whales? If so, what will we say? And what
will they say back?
The history of human relations with whales is mostly
bloody and exploitative, but Mustill argues that science and
technology helped change it for the better. One of many
scientific heroes in his book is American researcher Roger
Payne. In 1967, when commercial whaling was at its peak,
Payne received recordings of whale sounds from the US navy,
whose underwater listening stations were eavesdropping on
Soviet submarines. Payne was haunted by the beauty of the
sounds, and by the fact that they repeated themselves. His
1971 Science paper on whale "song" was a blockbuster; Payne
also released albums of humpback whale song, which moved
millions of people. His science - and the power of song -
chimed with the nascent environmental movement and Save
the Whales became a sound of the 70s. Whale hunting was
banned in US waters in 1972 and a decade later came a global
moratorium on commercial whaling.
Nevertheless, scientific attempts to communicate with
animals are also fraught with gimmicks, eccentrics - the
researcher who injected LSD into one of his study dolphins
discredited the field for years - and heated debates over
whether animal communication can ever be "language".
Mustill believes these old struggles will be ended by new
technology. After graduating in natural sciences at
Cambridge University, he began his own scientific career by
taking a fieldwork post in Mauritius, where he was tasked
with monitoring the pink pigeon, working for Carl Jones, an
inspirational biologist who defied scientific orthodoxies to
ALex HeRN
In the fight for theme park
visitors the battle lines have
been drawn - monster trucks,
virtual reality zombie warfare
and "smellscaping", just
thankfully not all at the same
time.
And while there was a sombre
atmosphere around parts of
London as tens of thousands
lined up to pay their respects to
the Queen, there were 10,000
more gathered in a convention
centre in East London
experiencing the future of the
theme park.
The convention centre's hall
was dominated by a monster
truck on hydraulics rocking
riders and a nine-foot-tall alien
3D-printed in a matter of hours.
Alongside that were several
full-size bowling lanes and more
soft play areas than you could fill
with a whole primary school's
worth of birthday parties.
Pinball manufacturers Stern
did, however, delay the launch
of its James Bond pinball
machines as a mark of respect
for the Queen.
Anyone taking a walk down
the cavernous hall couldn't help
but notice the vast quantity of
virtual reality headsets. Through
VR, riders on the monster truck
experienced being thrown about
as though they were being
driven around a real arena,
while
rollercoaster
manufacturer Mack Rides could
demonstrate some of its own
rides without needing to ship
Can AI bridge the gap between
interspecies communication?
captive-breed species on the brink of joining the dodo,
saving them from extinction.
Jones is a hero, but Mustill's fieldwork was ill-fated - there
was a cyclone and the pigeon pairs he watched failed to rear
any young. Mustill concluded he could do more for
conservation by becoming a filmmaker. Today, he's excited
that new technology is vastly improving the efficiency of
conservation fieldwork. Tiny audio recorders are used to
detect rare birdsong in Hawaiian forests, for instance. "The
machine never gets distracted. It's much better than me at
doing that job, which is a bit galling."
Computers flicking through vast reams of biological data
learn to recognise patterns that would take humans
Fluke shot of a tail slap by Tom Mustill.
centuries to detect. Recognition programmes are now
widespread in popular apps that identify plant species or
birdsong.
Mustill discovered the power of big nature data when he
met Ted Cheeseman, founder of the Happywhale website,
which collects people's whale snaps to identify individual
animals. When Cheeseman replaced the laborious human
study of each whale tail, or fluke, with an algorithm, they
exponentially increased the number of flukes they could
identify. "They have now identified almost every whale in the
Pacific, which would once have been a pipe dream for any
team of biologists," says Mustill. Cheeseman also helped him
discover the individual whale that may have spared his life:
it was named Prime Suspect.
Recognising individual whales is one thing, but Mustill
then met Aza Raskin and Britt Selvitelle, two Silicon Valley
entrepreneurs leading efforts to communicate with animals
via the Earth Species Project (ESP), a not-for-profit mission
billed as Google Translate for whales. AI successfully
translates human languages; ESP's AI experts backed by a
multimillion-dollar budget are working on other species.
"ESP is looking at every technological bottleneck across all
animal communication and trying to design solutions that
everybody can use," says Mustill.
They are creating tools, not new information, but just after
Mustill handed his book into his publisher, Roger Payne -
still championing whale research aged 87 - rang him at 11pm
on Christmas Eve with some new facts. "He was like, 'I'm
really sorry to say your book's not finished.' I'm so glad he
did call because he loops back into the book like a human
boomerang."
Payne led Mustill to the Cetacean Translation Initiative
(CETI), a supergroup of scientists with an awesome target:
VR and the future of theme parks
attendees out to the company's
own Europa Park in Germany.
The technology also helps
provide interactivity, something
that Mark Beumers, chief
executive of Dutch "dark rides"
vendor Lagotronics Projects,
thinks is going to become
increasingly crucial to the
experience.
"Visitors expect more and
more, since they grew up with
Bumper cars with VR headsets, at the IAAPA expo in London. Photo: Linda Nylind
technology, nowadays, and they
want to experience technology
in a theme park in a different
and better way than they can do
it at home. And since they
already have a lot of technology
at home that they experience in
a good way, a theme park needs
to be the extra step."
But, Beumers says, virtual
reality has its limits. Simply
getting headsets on and off
riders can add unacceptable
delays to loading up rides, and
the technology limits one of the
best aspects of going to a theme
park: sharing the experience
with the friends and family you
visit with.
And while the technology was
just starting to be installed in
parks towards the beginning of
2018, the impact of Covid in the
last couple of years has given
operators a chance to consider,
and shift their approach.
"In 2019, people were
thinking, this is the new thing,
this is going to take off," says
Emily Popovich, of theme park
design agency Outdoor Factory.
"But then Covid hit, and
everyone sort of forgot about
that.
"And then, after Covid,
everyone is calm and developing
new awesome things, there's so
many geniuses in this industry.
So we come out of Covid and
everything is better than it was
in 2019 and nobody cares about
that any more."
In its place, says Maximilian
Roeser, Mack Rides' head of
marketing, is a new push for
augmented reality that lets
riders experience all the benefits
of VR without being stuck in a
bubble that shuts them off from
the real world.
In the company's latest
creations, riders even put the
headsets on long before they get
on the rollercoaster itself, with
the queue, boarding and
to communicate with a whale well enough to exchange ideas
and experiences. By 2026. Led by marine biologist David
Gruber, CETI is throwing everything at a well-studied
population of sperm whales off the island of Dominica:
multiple underwater listening stations; drones carrying
hydrophones; whales tagged by drones; soft robotic fish
swimming among the whales gathering audio and video.
Will they converse with a whale by 2026? "Everything that
David Gruber has done before he has nailed," says Mustill.
"It's going to be the biggest animal behaviour data set ever
recorded. The voyage of [Darwin's] Beagle didn't just require
loads of specimen cases and somebody who could capture
these species, it needed people back home ready to
catalogue, compare and preserve these specimens. The data
version of that is data centres, formatting, and they're
making it open source so other people can do it."
There's a long history of scientific breakthroughs used for
ill. If we begin conversing with other animals, it's easy to
imagine them being manipulated: pigeons could carry
diseases to enemies or migratory turtles instructed to deliver
drugs to a distant shore. But Mustill is heartened by the fact
that both ESP and CETI are run on open-source principles -
their data and tools are free for others to use. "That's both a
way of fostering collaboration and allowing scrutiny,
because one of the only protections against exploitation is
being open," he says.
For all the fears of abuse, when - and if - we learn to
communicate with other animals, it seems likely to trigger
profound changes in inter-species relationships. Selvitelle,
says Mustill, has described ESP as "a machine for making
vegans". Imagine subtitles from footage of abattoirs. Animal
rights will be revolutionised if animals can advocate for
themselves. "In the history of people being mean to lesspowerful
people, who controls the story, whose voice is
heard and who is considered to have a voice is one of the key
things that allows manipulation," says Mustill.
Of course, if we can hear animals, we might not like what
they have to say. Facial-recognition apps translating what
our pets are "saying" is an obvious commercial innovation,
but what if they reveal that our pets hold us in contempt?
Mustill sees conversations with whales as potentially
comparable to missionaries meeting indigenous people.
"We unwittingly transfer things aside from good vibes when
we make contact with previously separate worlds. If sperm
whales talk to each other and transmit information that
shapes their culture and actions, and we're ready to speak to
alighting experience all having
virtual additions.
But Roeser says the biggest
changes are likely to be those
behind the scenes that such
technology enables. "Theme
parks will develop in a way that
you'll have more and more
interactivity.
"More and more
customisation to your
customers as well: all the parks
will know who is coming in,
their name, their age, probably
what they like and what they
dislike, and therefore they can
transform the park for each
guest. And each guest
experience will be different and
probably fitted directly to that
guest.
"We already worked with
that, because we have some
alpha options for our coaster
ride so that you can choose your
own experience: one person
that is sitting on the lefthand
side could see another movie
than the person on the
righthand side."
The classic experiences aren't
going anywhere, though. For
many, like Julie Rice-Witherell
of conference organiser IAAPA,
the global association for the
attractions industry, there's still
nothing that matches the thrill
of riding a new rollercoaster for
the first time.
"Every time they build a new
one anywhere near me, it's like -
it's just something different. I
wouldn't say it's better, but it is
faster, or it has more turns or
you know, hits higher G forces,
whatever. It's always something
new that you've never
experienced."
Photo: Ru Mahoney
ToRsTeN BeLL
Scrolling Twitter or refreshing Facebook
definitely feels like it's bad for you, as our
attention spans rot and meaning is drained
from our lives. Despite those strong feelings,
we're usually told the evidence isn't yet there to
prove social media damages our mental health.
The evidence of surging mental ill health is
strong, with 30% of 18- to 24-year-olds
reporting a common mental disorder in 2018-
19, up from 24% at the start of the millennium,
so it's hard not to worry that this debate echoes
the mid-20th-century arguments that we
hadn't absolutely proved cigarettes cause
cancer. Despite the strong correlation between
smoking and dying, many doctors didn't
believe the link had been proved even by the
1960s.
Reinforcing my prejudices is new research
examining the staggered introduction of
them, are they ready to be spoken to?"
Mustill remains convinced that, if possible, conversations
with animals will engender new human respect and,
potentially, new consciousness. It would certainly become
less comfortable sitting on a sofa made from animal skins if
those beasts could speak. But will we listen? Pleas from
indigenous Amazonians to halt the destruction of the
natural world fall on deaf ears in the west. "Industrialised
western society hasn't listened to them, but some of us have,
and ideas from those cultures - such as the idea that a river
can be alive - changes how you look at a river," says Mustill.
Suzanne Simard, the professor who discovered trees'
subterranean exchanges and communications via fungal
networks, was recently asked what she would ask a tree if
they could talk. "What do you think of us?" she replied. What
would Mustill ask a whale? "'What do you think of us?'
would be really interesting from their perspective because
they'd sense us in such a different way, but I'd also be
interested in 'How are you?' Because the answer to that
question would reveal both what is important to them and
whether they have a sense of the individual," he says. "One
of the biggest problems we have is individualism and the
feeling that we're supposed to get as much out of our lives as
we can. Perhaps other social animals offer us more collective
ways of looking at our lifespan and relationship to the
world."
What if you could design a mission to record a data set of
whale communications perfectly optimised for the latest
machine-learning and language-processing tools to scan?
What if you could capture not just whole conversations but
hundreds of thousands of them, from scores of different
whales totalling millions, perhaps billions, of vocalisation
units? Would you then have a chance at speaking whale?
This is the plan of the Cetacean Translation Initiative, or
CETI.
CETI is an interdisciplinary A?team of badass scientists:
marine robotics specialists, cetacean biologists, AI wizards,
linguistics and cryptography experts and data specialists.
They were all brought together at a meeting of academics at
Harvard in 2019, which was chaired by David Gruber.
Gruber is a marine biologist and inventor, crafting cameras
that can capture the glow of sea turtles and soft, robot
graspers to gently handle fragile deep-sea animals.
The team is huge, with scholars from Imperial College,
MIT, Harvard and other universities and help from among
others Twitter, Google and Amazon. Their goal, Gruber told
me, was: 'To learn how to communicate with a whale well
enough to exchange ideas and experiences'. CETI's plan is to
throw everything they've got at the population of sperm
whales off the island of Dominica in the Caribbean.
CETI will rig the seafloor with multiple listening stations.
They will cover a 12.5?mile radius and form the Core Whale
Listening station, recording 24 hours a day. Alongside will
be drones and 'soft robotic fish' equipped with audio and
video recording equipment, able to move among the whales
without disturbing them.
CETI hopes to place tags on mothers, grandmothers,
teenagers and great bull males from different pods. There
will be weather sensors and other contextual data, and they
will link vocalisations to behaviour and what they know of
each individual whale: was it hungry, fishing, pregnant, or
mating?
All of these data will be available for the open-source
community, so that everyone can get stuck in. Then the AIs
will really be unleashed. They will analyse the coda click
patterns that whales use to communicate, distinguishing
between those of different clans and individuals. They will
seek the building blocks of the communication system. By
listening to baby whales learn to speak, the machines and
the humans guiding them will themselves learn to
speak whale.
All of the machine-learning tools will be part of an attempt
to build a working model of the sperm whale
communication system. To test this system, they will build
sperm whale chatbots. To gauge if their language models are
correct, researchers will test whether they can correctly
predict what a whale might say next, based on their
knowledge of who the whale is, its conversation history and
its behaviours. Researchers will then test these with
playback experiments to see whether the whales respond as
the scientists expect when played whale-speak.
Finally, they will try to speak, back and forth, with the
whales. What do they expect to say? I asked David. 'The
important thing to me,' he said, 'is to exhibit that we care and
we are listening. To show the other beautiful life-forms that
we see them.'
Evidence that proves the negative
impact of social media
Facebook across US universities, launching in
Harvard in 2004 and then spreading across the
country. Using surveys of students, it shows the
platform's arrival saw them being more likely to
report poor mental health with increases in
depression and anxiety of 7% and 20%
respectively. We're talking about the negative
impact of Facebook being around 22% of that of
losing a job - this is big. The authors argue the
impact is from increasing social comparisons.
Seeing everyone else having a great time isn't
good if you're not. The research shows that
Facebook's arrival increased students'
perceptions of how much other students were
drinking - a fairly good proxy for how much fun
you think others are having at that age - but had
no effect on actual drinking levels.
The youth of today might not smoke but it's
hard to believe newer forms of addiction are
completely harmless.
The negative impact of Facebook is about a fifth of that of losing your job.
Photo: Pixellover RM