WEBVTT - Ep23 "How can we learn to speak alien?" 0:00:04.720 --> 0:00:08.079 Imagine that one of these centuries we make contact with 0:00:08.240 --> 0:00:09.760 an alien civilization. 0:00:10.039 --> 0:00:11.600 It's a big. 0:00:11.400 --> 0:00:15.880 Cosmos with quintillions of planets, so it's bound to happen 0:00:15.920 --> 0:00:18.279 at some point. But how the heck are we going 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:22.320 to understand what they're saying? How are we going to 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:26.960 decode their language? After all, they might not communicate with 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:30.280 air compression waves. Maybe they do something visual, but in 0:00:30.360 --> 0:00:32.640 ranges of light we can't even pick up with our eyes. 0:00:33.320 --> 0:00:37.000 We won't have a Rosetta stone, So how are we 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:40.199 going to decipher what they are trying to say to us? 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:43.120 And this might seem speculative, but what I want to 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:46.600 draw our attention to is that we currently are in 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:50.480 the same position right now, right here at home, which 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:54.400 is that we can't tell what a single one of 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:58.800 the two million species on our planet are saying, not 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:03.080 even the six six hundred species of mammals, which are 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:07.319 presumably kind of like us. We're not having conversations with 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:12.360 anyone but ourselves. With all these species, I'm willing to 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:15.000 bet you don't listen to a single podcast not. 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:16.479 Made by a human. 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:21.640 But today we're going to see some hope, some pathways 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:27.080 for how we might get to animal translation and relatively soon. 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:34.480 Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman. I'm a 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:38.600 neuroscientist and an author at Stanford and in these episodes 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:44.120 I examined the intersection of science and our lives, and 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:54.360 today we're going to talk about understanding animals. When I 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:57.440 was a kid, I saw some episodes of Star Trek, 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:00.920 the original one with Kirk and Spock, and the thing 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:04.200 that always struck me was how every week on schedule 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:10.040 they discovered new alien civilizations, which is not so crazy 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:14.839 given that the universe is presumably teeming with life. There 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:18.399 are about one hundred billion galaxies, and each of these 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:22.960 has about one hundred billion stars, and most stars have 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:28.200 some planets rolling around them, so it's extraordinarily unlikely that 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:31.040 we are the only planet with life on it. But 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:35.440 before I get into alien communication, let's quickly address something first. 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:39.800 You've probably heard of the Fermi paradox, and if you haven't, 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:43.519 it's a very important question. It's the question of why, 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:46.160 if there's all this life in the cosmos, why have 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:50.480 we not heard a peep from anyone. This paradox is 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:54.680 named after the physicist Enrico Fermi, who raised this question 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:59.800 if there are so many potential alien civilizations, why haven't 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:03.400 we detected any signals or encountered any of them. Yet 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.160 we're living in a moment of history where there seems 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:10.919 to be this very strange contradiction between the high probability 0:03:11.040 --> 0:03:16.160 of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of any shred of 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:19.920 evidence for them. So over the decades, people have proposed 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:25.320 all kinds of possible explanations for the Fermi paradox. The 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:28.920 first is that maybe aliens don't exist, which is the 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:34.080 simplest explanation but presumably not terribly likely given the size 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:37.280 of the cosmos. So some people point out that maybe 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:41.440 the problem just has to do with the enormous distances, 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:46.360 the vastness of space, and the limitations of our current 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:50.360 technology that might make it hard to detect other civilizations 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:54.119 even if they exist, because the distances between stars are 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:59.080 enormous and signals may take thousands or millions of years 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:02.240 to reach us. Okay, so that's a possibility. Or A 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:06.640 related idea is what's called the rare Earth hypothesis, which 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:11.400 is that Earth like planets, which are capable of supporting 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:16.400 complex life, are exceedingly uncommon in the universe, and that 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:22.760 makes the emergence of intelligent civilizations a rare event. But again, 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:27.840 given that there are something like seventy quintillion planets, that's 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:33.039 a seven followed by nineteen zeros Earth like planets can't 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:39.120 be too rare. So another idea is the technological singularity idea. 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:44.640 Some thinkers have proposed that advanced civilizations might always end 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:51.840 up reaching a technological singularity when their technology suddenly accelerates rapidly, 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:56.080 and one possible outcome of this is that these civilizations 0:04:56.480 --> 0:05:00.640 tend to self destruct, and a related hypothesis is that 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:04.919 when other civilizations hit this singularity, this leads them to 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:10.640 a post biological existence. They're no longer products of nature, 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:14.320 but instead they build themselves into other sorts of devices, 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:17.800 which would be hard for us to detect given the 0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:22.120 ways that we're searching. And other people suggest that advanced 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:28.279 civilizations intentionally avoid broadcasting their signals or their presence for 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:33.560 fear of attracting unwanted attention or causing conflicts with less 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:38.440 advanced civilizations. Or maybe they're just not interested in contacting us. 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:40.760 They might be too busy with their own problems, or 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:44.600 they simply don't see us as an interesting threat or ally, 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:46.920 so there's no reason to pick up the phone. And 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:52.080 then there's the possibility that they use extremely different communication 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:56.200 methods than we do, so different that we can't currently 0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:57.560 understand them. 0:05:57.520 --> 0:05:59.719 Or even know what we should be looking for. 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.800 So ultimately we don't know why we haven't heard from 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:07.760 anyone yet. There may be other reasons, or maybe multiple 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:10.680 of the reasons I mentioned, or all at play, but 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:12.719 for now we just have to live with the fact 0:06:12.800 --> 0:06:16.920 that we haven't yet heard from anyone. So this was 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:19.960 part of the appeal of Star Trek. Every week there 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:22.960 spacewarping off to some new coordinates, and. 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:26.320 Everywhere they go they meet new civilizations. 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:29.560 Now, the thing that always struck me as funny and 0:06:29.720 --> 0:06:33.360 the point of this episode is that each week they 0:06:33.480 --> 0:06:37.320 end up meeting these new aliens. And often these aliens 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:40.840 look like a female movie star in a cool jumpsuit, 0:06:40.960 --> 0:06:44.400 but with subtle differences like pointy ears and green skin. 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:48.800 But the key thing is that all these aliens speak English. 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:52.719 Usually it's a slightly broken English with a difficult to 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:57.920 discern accent, but nonetheless pretty easily understandable, which is of 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:01.479 course very lucky for these Star warsvoyagers who happen in 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:05.119 several hundred years from now to speak English themselves. Now, 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:08.279 why did the writers of Star Trek choose to make 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:09.960 everyone speak just like we do? 0:07:10.680 --> 0:07:10.920 Well? 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:14.920 This is a basic constraint of storytelling. It's the only 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:18.760 thing that will work for telling a narrative that people 0:07:18.800 --> 0:07:22.440 will tune into. It's hard to tell a story if 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:26.080 the alien is some kind of weird fungus thing that 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:30.280 doesn't speak or lives at a different timescale than we do, 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:34.120 like a tree. If we land on a planet of mute, 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:37.680 slow fungus creatures, it's not going to make good television. 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:41.920 So the stories we tell will always have aliens that 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:44.840 we can talk with and that serve as not so 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:49.560 distant reflections of ourselves. Okay, so no problem, that's what 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:54.920 storytelling requires. But in real life, it's much more likely 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:58.400 that we're going to have a very very difficult time 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:03.760 communicating much of anything to aliens when we find them. 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:06.840 You might think that we can get by with something 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:09.480 like take me to your leader or some sort of 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:13.240 hand signals, but in fact none of that's going to work. Now, 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:17.040 what's the reason that I say this? Why should we 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:20.400 think that communication is going to be so difficult. Well, 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.320 the aliens we find on other planets are going to 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:27.440 have a totally different evolutionary history. They may not be 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:31.640 based on DNA like all earthly creatures are, but instead 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:35.959 may have found a completely different way of encoding information 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:41.240 and managing replication and building societies. And it's possible they 0:08:41.280 --> 0:08:44.719 won't even be carbon based like all creatures on Earth are, 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:48.560 but instead based on something like the element silicon, which 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:51.640 also has a tetrahedral structure and can make lots of 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:54.959 useful elements and so on. So there's a whole field 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:59.800 of this called astrobiology, where astro refers to star and 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:05.040 often known as exobiology, where exo means outside, and the 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:08.480 idea with this area of study is to search for 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:13.679 naturally evolved life in the universe, mostly on other planets 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:17.800 in the habitable zone, that's the Goldilocks zone of planets 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:21.080 who rotated just the right distance from their star so 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:24.000 it's not too hot not too cold. I'll also mention 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:29.080 there's a closely related field called zenobiology, which means alien 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:33.320 or foreign biology, and that term is usually reserved to 0:09:33.440 --> 0:09:37.640 refer to biology that is synthetic, not found in nature 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:41.760 that science has no clue about yet. The general idea 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:47.520 is that astrobiologists try to detect and eventually analyze life 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:52.439 elsewhere in the universe, while xenobiologists will attempt to design 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:56.560 forms of life with a totally different biochemistry or different 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:00.360 genetic code than on planet Earth. Now, when we search 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:03.280 for life in the universe, I don't really see any 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:08.000 reason to imagine a distinction between naturally evolved life on 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:12.400 other planets and synthetic forms of life, because a planet 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:15.000 ten thousand years ahead of us would be well on 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:17.840 its way to building other species in the same way 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:22.480 that our species existence might simply serve as the spark 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:26.559 to build an artificial species that colonizes the Solar System. 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:29.320 And so for this reason we should always be thinking 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:34.000 about new biologies, new animals that could use a completely 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:38.319 different kind of biochemistry. On this planet, all we've ever 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:43.640 seen for coding information is DNA and RNA. We have 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:47.200 twenty amino acids from which we build all our proteins, 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:50.559 which are like little molecular machines. But instead of DNA, 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:56.480 we might find elsewhere what we'll call XNA zeno nucleic acid. 0:10:56.520 --> 0:11:00.560 You might find a massively expanded genetic coat that uses 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:03.880 other amino acids to build totally new kinds of proteins, 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:07.160 or perhaps most likely, you could have something that's not 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:10.760 like our genetic code at all. Something to considers that 0:11:10.800 --> 0:11:13.959 we only discovered the genetic code in nineteen fifty three, 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:16.400 which is not that long ago. I actually worked with 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:20.280 Francis Criek, the code discoverer of the structure of DNA, 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:24.600 So this is massively recent and we don't know what 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:29.000 we haven't thought of yet. So for this reason, I 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:34.160 think of the whole endeavor of space biology as zenobiology, 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:37.240 thinking about and looking for ways that life could be 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:41.200 built that we haven't yet imagined yet. And by the way, 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.280 it's thought exercises like this that make me wish I 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:48.520 could see the text books that our descendants will read 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:51.440 five hundred years from now or one thousand years from now. 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:55.959 There's going to be so much known that we currently 0:11:56.040 --> 0:11:59.720 can't imagine. That's totally in our dark zone. Things we 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:03.600 have I haven't even realized that we don't know. Okay, 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:06.920 So all of this is to say life might be 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:10.760 massively different than what we have here on Earth, and 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:14.480 the question is will we figure out how to be 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:18.040 like Captain Kirk and beam onto their planet and have 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:19.800 a conversation with them. 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:22.760 Now, maybe all this talk. 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:27.400 About extraterrestrials seems abstract because we haven't discovered any yet. 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:31.160 But I want to point out that we are surrounded 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:34.679 by aliens. They are all around us, and they're making 0:12:34.880 --> 0:12:40.880 constant sounds. We have measured this alien language with our recorders, 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:45.440 and at the moment we have no idea what they're saying. 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:53.320 Now, that's the. 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:58.760 Sound of whales on our planet, and lots of animals 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:03.080 make noise, And the question is, are these animals that 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:04.720 we're surrounded. 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:06.480 With speaking a language. 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:09.920 These are the aliens that we don't have to travel 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:14.120 very far to listen to, And the question is can 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:15.200 we understand them? 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:16.920 So maybe so, maybe not? 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:21.920 After all, these sounds could be like belches or like grunting, 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:24.240 the way you do when you're home alone and you 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:26.480 bang your knee the night before and you're going up 0:13:26.480 --> 0:13:29.320 the stairs and you make a sound, but it's not 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:31.240 really meant for anyone in particular. 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:32.720 It's just a noise that you're making. 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:37.559 So how would we know if animals are actually implementing 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:43.720 language and communicating meaning to one another. Well, this is 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:47.360 an unanswered question right now, and it probably differs species 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:50.640 by species. One thing biologists look at to try to 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:54.480 address this is things like turn taking. Does one animal 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:57.120 make some sound and then the other animal goes, and 0:13:57.120 --> 0:13:59.480 then the first one again, and then the second. That 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:03.640 feels more like language, right something had said, there's some response. 0:14:04.040 --> 0:14:07.200 It feels like there's at least the possibility for some 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:10.880 real meaningful conversations that way. But there are a lot 0:14:10.920 --> 0:14:14.160 of questions here. Even if we found that some species 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:19.520 were speaking language, would we be able to understand the meaning? 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:22.840 And I don't mean this in terms of this call 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:26.200 means this thing, but in terms of what does that 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:31.080 thing mean for a human? Imagine if a bee is 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:33.760 talking about some experience that you really have to see 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:38.160 in ultraviolet to understand, or your dog is experiencing something 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:42.080 about smell that we couldn't possibly get from our experience, 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:45.840 or a dolphin is talking about the joy of that 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:49.000 moment where there's no more little fish, and so the 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:52.760 whole pod suddenly turns upward and rockets through their world 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:57.320 and breaks through some surface where everything is different. Might 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:00.320 it be the case that there's simply no way we 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:03.480 could totally understand what they mean. There may be things 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:06.440 we can identify that they are talking about, but I 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:10.720 think there's a spectrum of how close we would actually 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:14.120 be in our interpretation. And by the way, I'll just 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:17.080 note this is true with our fellow humans as well. 0:15:17.440 --> 0:15:21.480 Someone might tell you about an experience with hang gliding 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:26.040 or stamp collecting, or psychedelic drugs or whatever, and even 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:28.680 though you gnawd and you say, oh, I gotcha, I 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:33.000 can relate that to my own experience. There's a spectrum 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:37.480 of how closely you are actually capturing what they are describing. 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:41.920 Sometimes you might have an analogous experience that puts you close, 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:45.920 and sometimes your assumptions may be pretty distant. So back 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:50.119 to animals, how much could we even understand in a translation, 0:15:50.320 --> 0:15:55.240 given that animals have such different sensory windows on the world, 0:15:55.600 --> 0:16:00.160 and so their concepts might be very different from ours. Now, 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:03.720 even with all these caveats, how amazing would it be 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:08.440 if we could get even a low dimensional, blurry glimpse 0:16:08.680 --> 0:16:12.640 of what they were talking about. People have always wanted 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:15.800 to understand animals, and they've tried in the past. But 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:19.720 we are at an amazing moment in history where I 0:16:19.760 --> 0:16:22.840 think the time is right around the corner. And I'm 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:24.840 not saying this is a general claim. I'm saying this 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:29.880 for two specific reasons. First, we have incredible technology now 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:34.600 which makes it possible to do biologging. What is biologging. 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:39.160 This is about collecting data from an animal with a small, 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:40.160 lightweight device. 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:41.680 These are called biologgers. 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:44.320 You hook these up to an animal and that way 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:48.360 you can collect data for long windows of time without 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:53.160 humans being around. You can record sounds, and measure physiology 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:55.960 and track movements, and this is how you get a 0:16:56.200 --> 0:17:00.640 secret window into an animal's world. Any thing is that 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:04.320 it gives new, rich data that you just can't get 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:08.639 otherwise about animals in their natural environment. Now, it's not 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:12.280 always easy to attach to the biologgers to animals, especially 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:15.560 if they're small and fast. But the main problem is 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:19.560 that the data collected by the biologgers can be really 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:24.360 complicated and difficult to analyze. So we humans have amassed 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:27.760 a ton of rich data that we're sitting on. And 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:31.000 that leads to the second specific reason why we're just 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:35.680 on the verge of something amazing, and that's artificial intelligence. 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:56.040 AI has been used for years to translate and decode 0:17:56.119 --> 0:18:00.000 human languages, and now we have this incredible opportunity to 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:05.080 leverage it for understanding animal communication. And I'm lucky enough 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:07.080 to be friends with one of the people at the 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:10.679 lead of the effort to decrypt these alien languages that 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:14.720 were surrounded with So how does our modern technology give 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:18.080 us hope for decoding animal language. 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:23.080 So the insight originally came in twenty thirteen when I 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:27.560 was listening actually to NPR and there was a researcher 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:29.440 describing to a lot of monkeys. 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:33.400 That's Asa Raskin. He's a writer and entrepreneur and inventor, 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:36.879 and for the purposes of today, he founded the Earth 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:42.280 Species Project ESP, which is a nonprofit focused on using 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:45.879 AI to decode non human communication. 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:53.119 And these animals are They're credible. They live in the 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:57.639 Ethiopian highlands. They have like huge maines, red patches on 0:18:57.680 --> 0:19:01.879 their chests. And what I did realize is that, according 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:04.520 to the researcher, they had one of the largest vocabularies 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:08.119 of any primate except for US humans. In fact, the 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:12.480 researchers swear that these animals talk about them behind their back. 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:15.520 And so the thought back then was like, well, if 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:17.840 people are just out there. The researchers are just out 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:22.879 there trying to understand what these beings are saying using 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:25.800 like a hand recorder in hand transcribing. Couldn't there be 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:28.520 a better way? Couldn't we use like machine learning AI 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:32.159 large scale microphone arrays. But of course, in twenty seventeen, 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:36.560 that wasn't yet possible because machine learning couldn't do something 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:40.040 that human beings couldn't already do. They couldn't translate a 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:45.199 language without a Rosetta stone, without any examples. And that 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:49.480 really changed in twenty seventeen when the machine learning community 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:51.160 there were two papers that came up back to back 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:53.480 and the Way this Thing Happens, that showed that you 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:57.920 could translate between any two human languages without the need 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:01.680 for examples or Rosetta stones. And I can dive into 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:03.800 how that works, but that was the moment that we 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:07.080 said we should get going and along the journey, I 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:09.520 just should say, like, all right, is there even a 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:13.080 there there? Like we say animal language, What does that mean? 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:15.680 What is a rich complex communication structure? What would that 0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:18.000 look like? I just want to give a couple examples 0:20:18.040 --> 0:20:21.880 for your listeners. So off the coast of Norway, every 0:20:21.960 --> 0:20:26.280 year there's a group of false killer whales that all 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.919 phenomenologically speak one way, and a group of dolphins that 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:33.359 all speak another way, and they come together and they 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:37.920 hunt in a superpod. And when they do this, they 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:43.200 speak a third different way, which is just sort of crazy, 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:45.560 right like. And it turns out that whales, you know, 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:48.679 have a culture extending back thirty four million years. They 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:51.399 have dialects that sort of split off, which they can 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:53.720 understand each other with, and that can split all the 0:20:53.720 --> 0:21:00.560 way into mutually unintelligible languages. Another example is I learned 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:03.159 this in twenty fourteen that for campell monkeys, hawk for 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:06.520 them means eagle, crack means leopard, and hawk ooh means 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:09.359 predator that's up, crack ooh means predator that's down. So 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:12.119 now we have a simple syntax. And then one of 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:16.119 my favorite studies is from the University of Hawaii in 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:19.480 nineteen ninety four, and here they taught dolphins two gestures, 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:23.199 and the first gesture was do something you've never done before, 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:25.480 which is sort of a crazy thing to be able 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:27.680 to communicate, but the dolphins will do it. And to 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:29.960 remember to do that, that means they have to remember 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:33.399 every single thing they've done before that session, understand the 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:36.440 concept negation not one of those things. Then invent whole cloth, 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:39.479 some new thing that they've never done before, but they 0:21:39.480 --> 0:21:41.440 can do it. And then they'll teach the dolphins a 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:45.399 second gesture, do something you haven't done before. Together, and 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:47.760 they'll say, at the same time, do something you haven't 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:51.280 done before. Together. The dolphins go down, exchange sawnic information, 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:53.320 come up and do the same trick they've never done 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:57.240 before at the same time. And while that doesn't prove 0:21:57.320 --> 0:22:01.560 representational language, it certainly places I think Auckham's razor. On 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:04.159 the other foot, it certainly seems that way. How do 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:08.520 you know, though, when you're approaching these that there exists languages? 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:11.600 For example, you said that whale culture or civilization is 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:14.120 thirty four million years old, But how do we know 0:22:14.200 --> 0:22:16.840 that they're speaking a language that has the kind of 0:22:16.960 --> 0:22:20.560 structure that we have that is capable of passing on 0:22:20.600 --> 0:22:25.680 a culture or civilization. Yeah, great question, And of course 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:29.439 it's hard if you can't listen in and understand. But 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:33.119 you know, there are two hallmarks of language that human 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:36.439 beings have, one of which is to be able to 0:22:36.480 --> 0:22:40.600 talk about something that isn't here and something that isn't now, 0:22:40.760 --> 0:22:42.720 can you refer to things that are in a different time, 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:46.080 in a different place. And we can actually see already 0:22:46.240 --> 0:22:49.760 from the research that the answer is. It appears to 0:22:49.800 --> 0:22:52.040 be the case that at least some animals can do this. 0:22:52.160 --> 0:22:56.679 So Adrian Lumero is a researcher on great apes, and 0:22:56.720 --> 0:22:59.800 he's discovered in the last year or so that are 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:03.000 tangs do have a version of a past tense. They 0:23:03.040 --> 0:23:06.000 can talk about things that are not now. And then 0:23:06.200 --> 0:23:10.800 dolphins have names that they called each other by, and 0:23:11.240 --> 0:23:14.280 Ian Yannick in twenty sixteen discovered that they will use 0:23:14.320 --> 0:23:17.120 those names in the third person. They can talk about 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:20.480 one of their own that is not here. So now 0:23:20.480 --> 0:23:25.680 we have two of the hallmarks not here not now. Now, 0:23:25.920 --> 0:23:28.560 when we say language, we only have one example of 0:23:28.600 --> 0:23:31.800 a species that speaks what we call language humans and 0:23:31.880 --> 0:23:33.960 almost always like if you only know one color and 0:23:34.000 --> 0:23:36.480 then you learn a second color, you discover an entire 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:40.280 rainbow in between. Like when we say language, you know 0:23:40.320 --> 0:23:43.120 we're using that to be a catch all for rich 0:23:43.440 --> 0:23:47.240 communication systems that can pass on cultural information. 0:23:47.720 --> 0:23:48.520 Yeah, agreed. 0:23:49.800 --> 0:23:51.720 Let me jump back to the orangutans for one second. 0:23:51.840 --> 0:23:54.399 Is there any evidence that they have future tents. 0:23:54.880 --> 0:24:00.480 That's a great question. We do not know. That's what's 0:24:00.480 --> 0:24:04.400 so exciting about this field right now, is I think 0:24:04.480 --> 0:24:06.920 of this it's sort of like the invention of the 0:24:06.960 --> 0:24:10.119 Hubble telescope, right, It's like, and if you remember, I 0:24:10.119 --> 0:24:14.199 think it was back in nineteen ninety five they pointed 0:24:14.200 --> 0:24:16.720 the Hubble telescope and an empty patch in sky and 0:24:16.760 --> 0:24:19.200 what they discovered was the most galaxies that have ever 0:24:19.240 --> 0:24:23.840 existed in one spot. That's essentially what we're discovering here 0:24:23.960 --> 0:24:26.920 is that we just haven't had the tools to look 0:24:27.480 --> 0:24:31.200 and when we do, what we're discovering is much more 0:24:31.200 --> 0:24:33.159 than everything we discovered. What we're discovering is everything. 0:24:33.280 --> 0:24:36.879 Yeah, exactly right, the deep field experiment. So how do 0:24:36.960 --> 0:24:40.080 we actually do it? How do we apply all the 0:24:40.119 --> 0:24:43.080 modern tools of science to see if we can decode 0:24:43.119 --> 0:24:43.879 a language? 0:24:44.440 --> 0:24:44.720 Yeah? 0:24:44.800 --> 0:24:47.560 Great question. So I'm going to start with this twenty 0:24:47.600 --> 0:24:50.600 seventeen technology, and I just want your audience to remember 0:24:50.720 --> 0:24:54.000 that twenty seventeen is essentially the Stone Age in AI. 0:24:55.080 --> 0:24:57.760 But I think it's a really useful conceptual tool to 0:24:57.840 --> 0:25:00.720 understand how it might work. So, how do you translate 0:25:00.800 --> 0:25:04.960 between languages that don't have Rosetta stones. And it turns 0:25:04.960 --> 0:25:06.960 out what you can ask AI to do is build 0:25:07.040 --> 0:25:09.920 a shape that represents a language. So you say, feed 0:25:09.960 --> 0:25:12.520 in all of Wikipedia, a whole bunch of text, and 0:25:12.560 --> 0:25:16.560 the AI generates a shape that represents a language. Imagine 0:25:16.600 --> 0:25:20.800