Talking to Whales, Pedestrian Patterns, Women’s Competitiveness
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 963 Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2022
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn how AI may learn to talk to whales; why pedestrians don’t follow the shortest route; and competitiveness in women.
Researchers are using AI to understand whale clicks — and talk back to them by Briana Brownell
- Hakai Magazine. (2021). Are We on the Verge of Chatting with Whales? | Hakai Magazine. Hakai Magazine; Hakai Magazine. https://hakaimagazine.com/features/are-we-on-the-verge-of-chatting-with-whales/
- Scientists Are Working on an AI to Let Us Talk to Whales. (2021, October 27). Futurism; Futurism. https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-ai-whale-language
- PROJECT CETI. (2020). https://www.projectceti.org/
- Welch, C. (2021, April 19). Animals; National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/scientists-plan-to-use-ai-to-try-to-decode-the-language-of-whales
Pedestrians are wired to follow the "pointiest" route, not the shortest by Cameron Duke
- Bongiorno, C., Zhou, Y., Kryven, M., Theurel, D., Rizzo, A., Santi, P., Tenenbaum, J., & Ratti, C. (2021). Vector-based pedestrian navigation in cities. Nature Computational Science, 1(10), 678–685. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-021-00130-y
- How the brain navigates cities. (2021, October 18). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/931695
- Duke, C. (2021, August 12). Howler monkeys navigate using adaptable mental maps, just like humans. New Scientist; New Scientist. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2286901-howler-monkeys-navigate-using-adaptable-mental-maps-just-like-humans/
Women are just as competitive as men, they just show it differently by Steffie Drucker
- Barroso, A., & Brown, A. (2021, May 25). Gender pay gap in U.S. held steady in 2020. Pew Research Center; Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/25/gender-pay-gap-facts/
- Study casts doubt on theory that women aren’t as competitive as men. (2021, November). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/932985
- Cassar, A., & Rigdon, M. L. (2021). Prosocial option increases women’s entry into competition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(45), e2111943118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2111943118
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. |
| 0:05.8 | I'm Cody Gough, and I'm Ashley Hamer. |
| 0:08.0 | Today you learn how researchers are using AI to understand and maybe even talk back to Wales, why pedestrians aren't |
| 0:15.4 | wired to follow the shortest route, and why women are just as |
| 0:19.3 | competitive as men. They just show it differently. |
| 0:21.6 | What satisfy some curiosity? |
| 0:24.0 | Have you ever wanted to have a conversation with a whale, Ashley? |
| 0:29.0 | Uh, yes, always. |
| 0:31.0 | Same! |
| 0:32.0 | Well, get this. Someday we might be able to. Thanks to a new project called |
| 0:38.4 | the Cetacean Translation Initiative, aka Project SETI. |
| 0:45.0 | It's an ambitious project. |
| 0:46.8 | The team is hoping to use artificial intelligence to model |
| 0:50.1 | and eventually translate sounds made by sperm whales into human language. |
| 0:56.4 | And maybe even to have a back and forth conversation with them. |
| 1:00.8 | Now, why sperm whales? Well, sperm oils are smart and their |
| 1:06.3 | conversations lend themselves well to analysis. Sperm whales communicate |
| 1:10.7 | using what are called codas. A coda is a brief series of clicks that |
| 1:15.8 | sounds a little bit like Morse code. Sperm whales talk back and forth to |
| 1:20.9 | each other using these codas and the relatively complex structure |
| 1:25.4 | suggests that the language is complex too. Another bonus, since these whales |
| 1:30.9 | communicate across long distances, their communication must be mostly, if not completely, acoustic. |
... |
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