AI could help decode sperm whales’ “codas”

Sperm whales have brains six times larger than humans, and more complex cerebral cortices. They communicate with each other in a language of clicks and squeaks known as “codas”, which researchers hope to decode using AI so that humans can talk to them in their own language. Project CETI, named to sound and look like a cetacean version of the separate and more famous Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), has been going since 2020 but is attracting snowballing interest as generative AI takes off – not least from Ross Andersen in the Atlantic. He hears from Nick Pyenson at the Smithsonian how different sperm whale clans have distinct sets of roughly 100 codas each that could be “orders of magnitude older than Sanskrit”. Answers to the question of what to ask a sperm whale range from “nothing” [ie just listen], to “sorry”. Last month Google’s James Manyika said the company had people working on dolphin-speak and that he was confident humans would speak with dolphins in their own language within our lifetimes. First impressions will presumably count. One researcher suggests as an ice-breaker in the first ever human-cetacean conversation: “I am excited to see you.”