“It takes the sounds, separates them, tokenizes them, and brings it into the world of large language modeling,” said Purves. “That’s an example of AI actively being used to study animal communication at a level we really couldn’t do before.”
Learn more at Business Insider’s coverage of DeepMind.
The Role of the Wild Dolphin Project
Founded in 1985, the Wild Dolphin Project has been conducting long-term field research on Atlantic spotted dolphins.
Their decades of underwater audio and behavioral recordings have provided a vital dataset for AI training. Their collaboration with DeepMind now gives scientists computational power to decode dolphin interactions with unprecedented accuracy.
More about the project can be found here.
Google DeepMind has a Vision for AI and Nature
DeepMind is not alone in this pursuit. The Earth Species Project, a nonprofit established in 2017, is building NatureLM-audio, the world’s first large audio-language model trained on animal sounds. Their mission is to help humanity shift from exploiting nature to truly connecting with it.
