315 - Guest: Gašper Beguš, Marine Linguist, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . We're going underwater, to talk with whales. There have been some amazing breakthroughs recently in understanding the language of sperm whales, and AI plays a fascinating part in that. And even if you have no immediate intentions to go say hi to a whale, AI's part in this story has ramifications far outside the field of cetacean communication. Taking us through that is Gašper Beguš, whose recent research has produced one of the most startling advances yet in the quest to understand whale communication. Gašper is Associate Professor of Linguistics at UC Berkeley, where he focuses on interpretable AI, combining linguistics, cognitive science, machine learning, neuroscience, philology, and marine biology. He is the Linguistics Lead at Project CETI, a nonprofit organization applying advanced machine learning and state-of-the-art robotics to understanding whales, working in Dominica in the eastern Caribbean. In his Berkeley Biological and Artificial Language lab, he also builds the most realistic models of human language learning. He's been featured everywhere from the BBC and the Guardian to Time, The Atlantic, and National Geographic. We start with a fascinating backgrounder in linguistics, then talk about what's captivating about whales, comparing them to other vocalizing creatures, talk about communicating with aliens and interspecies communication, what language even means for whales, and… the birds and the bees.  All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines! Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.